2014.9 journal of literature and art studies

Journal of Literature

and Art Studies

Volume 4, Number 9, September 2014 (Serial Number 34)

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Journal of Literature and Art Studies

Volume 4, Number 9, September 2014 (Serial Number 34)

Contents Literature Studies

Jean-Paul Sartre, Europeans, the “Feminine” and the Negritude Poems in the Black Orpheus 669 Nathalie Nya

Multicultural Women’s Views on the First World War in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway 681 Denise Borille de Abreu

Art Studies

A Contemporary Turkish Composer: Mete Sakpınar 689 Esra Karaol

The Kind of Virgin That Keeps a Parrot: Identity, Nature, and Myth in a Painting by Hans Baldung Grien 702

Bonnie J. Noble

Approaching an Abstract Cinematic Form: The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick 722 Christos Dermentzopoulos, Thanassis Vassiliou

An Analysis of Anton Von Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instruments 729 Esra Karaol

Special Research

Emotional Intelligence and Belief in Just World Among Engineering Students 740 Alpana Ashutosh Vaidya

Original or Western Imitation: The Case of Arab Theatre 749 Abdulaziz H. Alabdullah

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 September 2014, Vol. 4, No. 9, 669-680

Jean-Paul Sartre, Europeans, the “Feminine” and the Negritude

Poems in the Black Orpheus

Nathalie Nya The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, United States

The paper examines the development of “Negro poetry” from the Negritude movement through the analysis of

Sartre as featured in Black Orpheus (1976). Following the analysis of Sartre, the author looks at the Black/White

binary and its cultural and political context, which is based on the dominance of Europeans over Blacks. Then the

author examines how Blacks have attempted to subvert this binary through alternative political stands, such as the

practice of anti-racism, and innovative cultural art and literary forms, such as the Negritude movement. Like Sartre,

the author focuses on “Negro poetry” and examines its limits and the challenges it put forth against the White

supremacist elements in White dominant culture. The author concludes that while “Negro poetry” reflects a step

forward in the anti-racist development of Black political and cultural identities, it is a limiting method of approach

that does not subvert enough White dominant culture. This position enables the author to argue that, for example,

the essentialist, racist, and gender—and sex—biases within the representations and images of the “feminine” and

Black women are not sufficiently critically re-represented in “Negro poetry” of the Negritude movement. The

method of this approach is (1) to look at Sartre’s writing in Black Orpheus, (2) to include the secondary literature of

this text within my analysis, (3) to examine sections of “Negro poetry” as featured in Black Orpheus, and (4) to

critically access the racial, sex, and gender dimensions of “Negro poetry” as they relate to the achievements of the

men or artists of the Negritude movement.

Keywords: Europeans/Whites, Blacks, colonialism, race, anti-racism, gender, negritude, “feminine”

Introduction The purpose of this paper is to examine Sartre’s views of Europeans and Blacks, and the “feminine” and

Black women in Negritude poetry as featured in Black Orpheus (1976). The author begins by examining the racial context from Sartre’s perspective that sets the stage for the development of the Negritude movement, a cultural literary and political movement, developed by Francophone black intellectuals, writers, and politicians, such as Leopold Senghor and Aime Cesaire, in France starting in the 1930s and flourishing after World War II. Then the author examines how the use of poetry as a political and cultural literary genre enabled Black writers/poets to put into question the White supremacist and negro-phobic elements within European dominant culture. Finally, the author uses the representations and images of Black women and the “feminine” in order to show how as a critique, “Negro poetry”—an anti-racist literary art form within the Negritude movement which attempted to subvert or change the White supremacist and Negro-phobic elements within European dominant culture and within the minds and cultures of Blacks—attempted to subvert, for example, the racist depictions of

Nathalie Nya, Ph.D., lecturer, Department of Philosophy, The Pennsylvania State University.

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JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, EUROPEANS, THE “FEMININE” AND THE NEGRITUDE POEMS

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Black women in European dominant culture, thereby challenging an aspect of White supremacy through poetry. Following Sartre, the author concludes that while “Negro poetry” from the Negritude movement challenges White supremacy, it has its limits. Sartre is famously quoted for suggesting that the Negritude movement is just a stage within the development of Black consciousness.1 Given that Blacks, as French colonized subjects, were raised through French education, which led them to believe that they could become acculturated as French, to Sartre, the Negritude movement’s attempts to subvert French European culture through the use of the French language limits the movement’s effort to truly subvert French European culture because the use of the French language reflects a self-contradiction on the part of specifically Black writers/authors/poets.2

This perspective on the male dominance of White and Black men over Black women will enable the author to argue that Sartre’s position on the poetry of the Negritude movement—specially the “Negro poetry” from Leopold Senghor’s famous anthology, is male biased. That bias gives political and cultural advantages to the understanding of not the oppression of both Black men and women, but of Black men mostly. Furthermore, Sartre’s analysis gives rise to the affirmative interpretation of the Black male poet/writer only, and thus it fails to give an account of the positive cultural and political contributions of the potential Black female author.

Europeans Europeans to Sartre After Being Seen by Blacks

When Sartre wrote Black Orpheus in order to examine “Negro poetry” from the Negritude movement, he began by analyzing the racial context between Europeans and Blacks, which led to the development of the artistic, political, and cultural literary context of the Negritude movement. This section follows Sartre’s method of approach and focuses on Sartre’s understanding of the race relations between Blacks and Europeans. Thus the author begins the analysis with this context in order to set the stage for the following two sections, which focus on the content of “Negro poetry”.

In Unfinished Projects, Paige Arthur says the following about Sartre’s views on Europeans in Black Orpheus:

In “Black Orpheus”, Sartre gave for the first time an indication that he thought that Europeans were in trouble, not because of the existential anguish that plagues everyone as a result of their freedom, but because of a kind of anguish that stems directly from the European’s situation as “oppressor”.3

To Arthur, Sartre in Black Orpheus establishes an analytical situation where the existence of Europeans as oppressors is to be questioned. Already in this analytical context, the subjectivity of Europeans is described in terms of their relation to the oppressed Other, the colonized and, more specifically, to Black colonized subjects. To Arthur then, Sartre makes us aware that Europeans are in trouble because their existence is defined by the oppressor and oppressed dyad, a dialectical duality that shows that the colonial system always pits the European against the person of African descent. Arthur emphasizes that for Sartre, it is the existence of the oppressed that defines the status of Europeans.

Arthur’s analysis is consistent with Sartre’s position in Black Orpheus. In the text, which was first published as an introduction to Leopold Senghor’s Anthology of New Negro and Malagasy Poetry,4 Sartre

1 See (Sartre, 1976, pp. 62-65). 2 See (Sartre, 1976, pp. 22-23). 3 See (Arthur, 2010, p. 41). 4 See (Senghor, 1969).


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suggests that the world has reached a point in the present where Blacks are beginning to look back at Europeans with a gaze of judgment.5 Before the author moves on with my analysis, the author wants to note that given Black Orpheus was first published as an introduction to Senghor’s anthology, the content of Black Orpheus was written to support the anti-racist, political and cultural ideologies within the development of the Negritude movement. So then Black Orpheus reflects Sartre’s judgment on Europeans through the eyes of Blacks. Traditionally, Sartre explains, Europeans held the power of seeing and judging Blacks without any interjection.6 Now Blacks are looking back at Europeans and, with their gaze, they question both their own human status and the proper status of Europeans.7

Sartre has a point in observing that there is a shift in the gaze between Blacks and Whites. However, as Margaret A. Majumdar claims, during the period of colonization, even with a bit of deference and although without any resolution, Blacks were able to literally look into the eyes of Whites.8 The difference now, starting after World War II, is that Blacks are looking back at Europeans in order to affirm themselves and to affirm their own human project.9 They are looking back, for example, because they want de-colonization or Independence, and they want to be treated as human beings on the same equal footing as Europeans.

In short, Blacks are reversing the gaze. The power of the gaze, or “the look”, as Sartre famously references in Being and Nothingness,10 can show how a person comes to understand himself through the eyes of another.11 With “the look”, Sartre explains, “I see myself because somebody sees me”12 and when that person sees me, it influences how I regard myself. In the context of Europeans caught up within the oppressor and oppressed dyad then, the look from Blacks makes Europeans see their existence as oppressors and recognize their existence with oppression.

By recognizing their existence with oppression, Europeans, through the gaze of Blacks, see the limits of their humanity and the limits of their freedom. The gaze of Blacks as David Detmer understands, creates a relation for Europeans where they are being-seen-by-the other.13 Furthermore, as Robert Bernasconi points out, Black Orpheus was primarily addressed to White people.14 It invited Whites to see themselves for the first time as Blacks saw them.15 The gaze of Blacks, then, creates a disclosure for Europeans. They are no longer safe identifying themselves as merely Europeans. Instead, they are oppressors who should identify their situations not with freedom but oppression.

While Sartre emphasizes that Black colonial subjects are looking back at Europeans, the look coming from these racialized subjects is situated within their condition of oppression (i.e., their exile from Africa, their experience with colonialism and slavery, and with the Manichean division of the world into Black and White).16 The look of Blacks then is forged within the oppressor and oppressed dyad, the colonized and colonizer dyad, the primitive and civilized dyad, and the Black and White dyad. 5 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 9). 6 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 7). 7 See (Sartre, 1976, pp. 7-8, 10-11). 8 See (Majumdar, 2007, p. 95). 9 See ( Majumdar, 2007, p. 95). 10 See (Morris, 2008, p 14). 11 See (Sartre, 1992, pp. 347-349). 12 See (Sartre, 1992, p. 349). 13 See (Detmer, 2008, p. 94). 14 See (Bernasconi, 1995, p. 207). 15 See (Bernasconi, 1995, p. 207). 16 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 19).


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Given the polarities between Blacks and Whites generate socio-cultural and political constraints in the lives of Blacks, it is important to examine the oppression of Blacks in order to understand why they are presently reversing the gaze on Europeans. Given the power relationships between Blacks and Whites, Blacks are oppressed, colonized and so-called racially inferior, while Whites are so-called superior based on their status as Europeans, so what human (or existential) project do Blacks have in looking back at Europeans? What is the boomerang effect of the “Black” gaze? The colonizers’ attempts to restrict a Black person’s freedom may produce a sense of rebellion in the Black person, which can be reflected as the boomerang effect of the “Black” gaze.

By looking back at Europeans, the colonized are then portraying an anti-conformist effort within the colonial system. The “look” then involves objectification and placement of the other body, its setting at a distance from the self, as a mutually constitutive project that is fundamentally spatial, as well as the basis for relationships of power between human beings.17 In order to address the boomerang effect of the “Black” gaze, its use and power, Sartre turns to the Negritude movement and examines the purpose and contradiction within the project of the Black poet as he consciously creates and defines Black poetry for the sake of Black people and in order to invigorate a race consciousness based on Black experiences.18 In his investigation, Sartre concludes that Black poets or Black writers testify to the “look” of this Black Other who reveals something crucial about the identity of Whites.19 As Blacks rediscover their own eyes and voices, Whites realize “the shock of being seen”, thus reversing centuries of unidirectional objectification.20 Sartre chooses to turn to the Negritude movement precisely because this political and cultural phenomenon has the main goal of subverting White racism and challenging the power relations between Blacks and Whites.

The Context “Negro Poetry” in the Literary Context of Negritude

The author now specifies the content of Sartre’s analyses on “Negro poetry”. To Sartre, “Negro poetry in the French language is, in our times, the sole great revolutionary poetry”21. To Sartre then, “Negro poetry” from the Negritude movement sets the movement apart from other cultural movements, such as Surrealism. What is revolutionary about Black poetry from the Negritude movement is that it attempts to subvert the Negro-phobic elements within French culture by giving cultural importance to writers from the French colonies.22 In other words, what is revolutionary about Negro poetry is that it presents an instance of Black anti-racism within a racist world. Moreover, as Bennetta Jules-Rosette notes, for Sartre, “as for the followers of negritude, Black poetry and the arts constitute a revolutionary force that challenges European society to address an affirmation of identity and an assertion of freedom”23.

Thus, the poetry created through the negritude movement reflects a freeing and emancipatory project. The author would even argue in support of Bennetta Jules-Rosette’s position that in his analysis of the revolutionary appearance of this poetry, Sartre places the colonized in the place of the colonizer, the Black in the place of the

17 See (Boyle & Kobayashi, 2011, p. 419). 18 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 11). 19 See (Charmé, 1991, p. 210). 20 See (Charmé, 1991, p. 210). 21 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 11). 22 See (Watts, 2008, p. 195). 23 See (Jules-Rosette, 2007, p. 268).


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White, in order to better convince his readers of the ways the Black poet has reserved the dialectic and challenged White supremacy.24 In other words, by turning the attention to Blacks, Sartre is able to show what these Blacks have to offer to society and how these Blacks are able to put into question White privilege. In Sartre’s analysis, Blacks are challenging the beliefs that Whites are superior to any other race and therefore they should politically, economically and racially dominate members of other races in society. Furthermore, as V. Y. Mudimba observes in The Invention of Africa, Sartre presents a means of struggle against the European ideology and affirms the right of people of African descent to fashion a new mode of thought, of speech, and of life.25 In Black Orpheus then, Sartre reflects on the creativity of the Black Diaspora.26

Before the author turns to the content of Sartre’s analysis of Black poetry, the author wants to note that with the few exceptions of female writers, such as Suzanne Cesaire and Paulette Nardal,27 the Black poets and writers of the Negritude movement were mostly male. Among these male poets and writers, the most famous ones include Leopold Senghor and Aime Cesaire. Both of these writers are included in Sartre’s discussion in Black Orpheus28 and the content of their writings influences Sartre’s definition of the Black poet and of “Negro poetry”. Therefore, the Black poet for Sartre is inherently male. In my analysis of Sartre’s views on the Black poet then, the author refers to the Black poet as “the Black male poet”.

The Black male poet from the French colonies, who has been taught French in school,29 uses the European language in order to communicate with and unite the colonized living within the limits of French colonization, since these Blacks do not have any other common language besides French.30 Yet since the goal of the Black male poet is to forgo the Negro-phobic elements within French culture, the use of the French language limits his project. In other words, “when the Negro declares in French that he rejects French culture, he takes in one hand that which he has pushed aside with the other”31. The project of the Black male poet then is built within cultural and linguistic tensions. The achievement of his project represents a cultural and epistemological impossibility.

Ultimately, the Black male poet cannot reject French. The French language is part of who he is. What the Black male poet does with the French language then is to reserve its value in order to use the language to his advantage.32 The Black male poet then, appropriates the French language and this, in part, is the power of Black poetry.33 Thomas W. Busch observes that:

[the] French colonizer has set itself up in the minds of the colonized through teaching them the French language. […] The French language, Sartre points out, reflects a historical collectivity. It has been forged over time to respond to specific, contingent needs and circumstances, and is unsuitable to furnish the Negro “with the means of speaking about himself, his own anxieties, his own hopes”. For the Negro to speak prose, a straightforward use of words, would be to fail to speak the Negro’s experience. Poetry allows for a speaking of experience that simultaneously performs an “auto-destruction of language”.34

24 See (Gyssels, 2005, p. 636). 25 See (Mudimbe, 1988, p. 84). 26 See (Liauzu, Benallegue, & Hamzaoui, 1984, p. 3). 27 See (Sharpley-Whiting, 2002, pp. 16-20, 68-79, 80-102). 28 See (Sartre, 1976, pp. 33, 56). 29 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 24). 30 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 22). 31 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 23). 32 See (Irele & Sartre, 1975, p. 40). 33 See (Yillah, 2005, p. 64). 34 See (Busch, 1999, p. 69).


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For the reason that Blacks cannot use straightforward French in order to combat the Negro-phobic elements within French culture, the Black male poet turns to poetry in order to achieve this goal.

Comparing, as Sartre does, the use of language within the project of the Black male poet to the use of language by the White proletariat for his fight against class struggle might explain why the White proletariat, although oppressed by Bourgeois reason, capital and culture,35 “rarely uses the language of poetry”.36 This comparison might also explain the differences between class and racial oppression. Based on Sartre’s analysis, the author concludes that class oppression is based on a rational endeavor, while racial oppression is not.37 So, in order to combat the irrational component of Negro-phobia (of racism), the Black male poet has to become creative, devious and sneaky with language, while the White proletariat has to become a technician of language in order to grasp and combat the rationalism, the materialism and the positivism of class oppression.38

Precisely because racism embodies numerous or countless “human” contradictions and irrational taboos, the Black male poet has to forge asymmetrical—almost beyond the realm of logic, and creative paths of approach to the problem of racism. It is vital to examine the Black male poet’s poetry in order to understand the creativity and subversiveness of his poems. In Black Orpheus Sartre does just this. Specifically Sartre examines the poems in Senghor’s Anthology of New Negro and Malagasy Poetry, the anthology with which Black Orpheus was originally published. In Black Orpheus, Sartre quotes poems by mostly Black male writers about 28 times. Some of these poems are quoted with the names of the writers while most of them are not. To name a few themes, these quoted poems are about race, Africa, the colonies, Europe, reason, passion, nature, men, women and sex.39

For the sake of my inquiry, the author focuses for the most part on poems that feature the situations of Black women and that include the sexual dimension of the Black experience between Black men and women. The analysis moves into this specific topic because the poems from Senghor’s anthology are very complex and various in nature. So rather than presenting in this paper the various ways these poems attempt to subvert White supremacy, the author focuses on one aspect: the poetic forms which focus on the intersection between gender, sex and race within the situation of Black women. In other words, the author focuses on how these Black male poets, in the anthology as referenced by Sartre, attempt to change both the racist and sexist images and representation of Black women in White dominant culture and, in the minds and culture of Blacks.

Gender, Sex, Race and the Critical Particulars of “Negro Poetry” The Representation of the “Feminine” and Black Women in “Negro Poetry”

In Black Orpheus, there are six poems cited that include the perceived situation of women and the objectifying assumptions about the “feminine”.40 By the “feminine” and in relation to “Negro poetry” as featured in Senghor’s anthology and as referenced by Sartre in Black Orpheus, the author means to say any ideas—material or immaterial and real or imagined, coming from either male or female (but mostly male given the context of this analysis), associated with the description of a person identified as/assumed to be, a potential gender or sexed female subject. In these six poems on the perceived situation of women and the objectifying

35 See (Haddour, 2005, pp. 289-290). 36 See (Sartre,1976, pp. 11-12). 37 See (Sartre,1976, pp. 11-2). 38 See (Sartre,1976, pp. 11-12). 39 See (Sartre,1976, pp. 8, 9, & 26). 40 See (Sartre, 1976, pp. 8, 20, 28, 45, & 48).


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assumptions about the “feminine”, the nude body of Black women, their dress code, their moods, their self-representation as Black dolls, their smile, their sex organs, their Blackness, their condition as women, mothers and lovers are described.41 These poems, written by Black men, treat women not as subjects but as objects of their inquiry and as objects of their sexual desire. These Black men, along with Sartre, since he chooses to quote these poems, treat Black women as the object of the gaze and as the object of their sexual desire. Sartre’s and these Black men’s claims on Black women then are exceptional because they attempt to positively define Black women against the primitivism associated with these women in the minds and culture of White Supremacy culture.42

As Bell Hooks claims in Black Looks, “to love Blackness is dangerous in a White supremacist culture”.43 Given that the mind and body of Blacks have been described in White culture as a source of inferiority, the abject, the inhumane and the primitive, as T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting shows in Black Venus,44 to claim the love and desire for Black female bodies is to undermine the White hatred and Black self-hatred attributed to Blackness. It is also to put in danger the remains of White Supremacy in White culture. The professed love and admiration for the Black female can be seen as a site of resistance to White Supremacy. By claiming and writing about the desire for Black women, these Black poets subvert White supremacy.

Capturing the famous slogan from the 1960s Black Power Movement, “Black is beautiful”,45 Sartre (quoting these poems) and these Black male poets of the Negritude movement are affirming what is unapologetically beautiful about Black women. These women are beautiful to these men because these women are mothers, lovers, representations of dolls and also beautiful. On the part of Sartre, it shows that he recognizes the beauty of Black women and on the part of these Black poets, it shows illustrations of self-love and the love of Black women.

Before I move ahead, I want to note that, especially on the part of Sartre, as Stuart Zane Charme notes, the beauty that Sartre finds in these Black poets’ description of Black women’s bodies does not reflect the position that he has on the bodies of women in general.46 For the most part, as it has been shown in his description of the feminine in Nausea for example, where the male protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, is nauseated by the female body of a White woman,47 Sartre tends to describe the body of women in the negative and with much ambivalence.48

Despite the great admiration, I have for both Sartre and these Black male poets, I still think that the

41 See (Sartre, pp. 8, 20, 28, 45, 48, & 51). 42 I want to note that in treating Black women as the object of the gaze, these Black male poets and Sartre run a fine line between the positive objectification—the positive admiration of Black women and the hyper-sexualization of these women. However, since the writings of these poets are in awe with the beauty of women, I give some credit to these men for “admiring” the beauty of women—or for gazing upon the body of Black women. I conclude that even in my criticism of these men, these men are not necessarily hyper-sexualizing Black women. These men are treating Black women as the object of sexual desire and rather not as sex objects. From this perspective then, and if I were to become critical, I would say that rendering Black women in poetry as “the object of sexual desire” transcend the race problems the Negritude movement wants to tackle; i.e., the racial objectification of women as being non-human. However, rendering Black women in poetry as “the object of sexual desire” may not transcend the gender and sexual issues within the situation of these women. Thus these poems, at least to me are exceptional because they attempt to transcend European racism directed at the representation of Black women. 43 See (Hooks, 1992, p. 9). 44 See (Sharpley-Whiting, 1999, pp. 16-31). 45 See (Goering, 1972, p. 231), (Lang, 2004, pp. 730, 739), and (Simmons, 1978, p. 54). 46 See (Charmé, 1991, p. 148). 47 See (Sartre, 2013, p. 59). 48 See (Charmé, 1991, pp. 147-149).


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manner in which the beauty and experience of Black women is expressed by these poets needs to be problematized. To begin, in the Anthology, a full perspective on the experience and beauty of Black women would have included the participation of Black women as poets and writers. From this Anthology, given that, based on the colonial context, the anthology was put together as “a talent show” or as “a testimony” of these Black writers’ literary skills, sensibility and humanity, we do not know how the Black female author is revered and “celebrated”.

Senghor could have, for example, invited Suzanne Cesaire and Paulette Nardal to participate in the Anthology. Since these poems on Black women are not also written by Black women, we are not given a full perspective on the experience and beauty of Black women. From these poems, we gather the experience and Blackness of these women in terms of female gender stereotypical archetypes. In the poems, Black women are archetypically described as mothers, lovers, and dolls and as objects of sexual desire. However, there is nothing in these poems about the roles that these women play in society apart from their relations to Black men. For example, at the beginning of Black Orpheus, Sartre quotes a passage from one of the poets in the Anthology:

Woman nude, women Black Dressed in your color which is life Woman nude, women obscure Ripe fruit of the firm flesh, dark ecstasy of the Black wine.49

We only learn from this poem how the woman is subjected to the male gaze. We know she is both literally and figuratively naked and that her body is associated with life, color, nature and objects. But who is this nude woman? How does she perceive herself? If a Black woman were to write about the nudity of a Black woman, would she come up with the same conclusion as the author of this poem? Perhaps rather than comparing the body of Black women with nature, a Black female poet would compare the body of Black women with life in the city and she would also compare the body of Black women among each other: by size, shape and shades of skin color. The Black female poet would describe the body of Black women in these ways while at the same attempting to avoid body image issues and the infamous problem of racial colorism among both Black and White people.

Rather than reflecting on the body of Black women in terms of darkness (i.e., “the dark ecstacy of the Black wine”), as the Black male poet does, which in turn reflects the traditional binary opposition between Black and White people, between darkness and lightness/whiteness, influenced by the racial ideologies found in White dominant culture, the Black female poet can challenge the binary of racial colorism by describing Black female bodies in terms of shades of brown and yellow, and even in terms of shades of purple (i.e., the purple lips of some Black women). Given my interest to find unique ways to imagine and represent the body of Black women, the author finds that the poem referenced above, despite its beauty, is still influenced by the type of racial binary, between Blacks and Whites, primarily originating from White dominant culture. From this poem then, we can see how despite his great effort, the Black male poet or the author of this poem in particular, at least when it comes to issues on the intersection between race and gender differences, remains influenced by ideologies of White dominant culture—an influence that does not only show the limits of using the rhetoric of the French language in order to work against the “racist” roots of the language, but also shows the incredible impression of “racist” European ideologies over the minds and thoughts of Blacks. Perhaps if the Black male

49 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 8).


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poets could think of themselves as people who can transcend the racial laws of the Black and White binary, maybe they would have the possibility to discover themselves the beyond realms of White cultural rules.

What the author says here also affects the Black female poet, because, although not acknowledged by Sartre, she is a byproduct of the French language and the dominant European French culture. The difference then between the Black male poet and the Black female poet, given the context of Senghor’s anthology and Sartre’s Black Orpheus, the Black female poet would be granted the attempt to at least try to define herself, in her own voice with the great and beautiful possibility of either failing or succeeding to poetically write about herself, other Black women and even other people in general.

Furthermore, Sartre notes that some of these poems, like Aime Cesaire’s poems and the one the author has referenced above, reflect “a perpetual coupling of women and men metamorphosed into men”.50 Some of these poems then, even while they may be on women, represent the erasure of women from Negritude. These poems do not represent dialogical relations between Black men and women. There is no evidence in these quoted poems that these male poets speak to Black women. What these poems represent is the ways Black women are objectified and are even subjected to a tint of exoticism (since these men compare the body of Black women with nature). The fact that Sartre does not take issue with the lack of the female perspective in the Negritude movement, and more specifically in the Anthology, shows that the shift that occurs through the reversal of the gaze between Blacks and Whites is based on the relation between European men and men of African descent.

The Black female, she cannot gaze back because she does not possess as a woman the power to objectify like a man,51 becomes voiceless. Since she is only seen as being the subject of the male gaze, the Black female is “robbed of her possibilities”52 as an author, as an agent. By being robbed of her possibilities as an agent, the Black female is identified as being incapable of reserving the gaze between Blacks and Whites. Sartre and these Black male poets do not see her as being capable of looking back at Europeans with the request of becoming humanized and decolonized. The Black female then cannot objectify European men or even European women. The Black female, according to her lack of agency in Sartre’s and these Black male poets’ writings, is at the bottom of the “human” barrel. Her situation within the dialectic of colonialism is that of subjective powerlessness.

The analysis on how Black women are not seen by Sartre and Black male poets as capable of being agents shows that these women are subordinate to men in general. In the analysis, the author shows how men observe Black woman, but the reverse doesn’t happen. Precisely because of this situation, there is a power relationship between Black women and men that prevents these women from objectifying men. Lacking the power, then as subjects to objectify others, Black women become subordinate to men in general.

As Hazel E. Barnes observes, “there can be no doubt that a full investigation of the linguistic codes in Sartre’s writing would reveal him to be a man comfortably ensconced in a world of male dominance”.53 In “How Sexist Is Sartre?” Bonnie Burstow also comes to the conclusion that Sartre’s writing is based on male dominance, and she argues that sexism may be found in Sartre’s writing.54 In an interview with Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre admits that there are some “macho” undertones in his writing.55 De Beauvoir observes that 50 See (Sartre, 1976, p. 48). 51 See (Duran, 2004, p. 273). 52 See (Murphy, 1987, p. 114). 53 See (Barnes, 1990, p. 341). 54 See (Burstow, 1992, p. 32). 55 See (Sartre, 1977, p. 95).


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Sartre neglects the oppression of women throughout his writing career, and she insists that one may find traces of “machismo” in his works.56 Sartre feels that she may be exaggerating a little but he seems to concede the point.57

These references suggest that Sartre’s choice to include poetry on the nudity of Black women in Black Orpheus reflects his attempts to allow his readers to gaze further upon the body of Black women, as it has been historically done, for example with the nude images of African women in National Geographic.58 As it has been shown with the study of, for example, Venus the Hottentot—Sarah Baartman, the South-African woman sold into slavery during the 19th century, Europeans used to put nude Black women on display for their exotic features—dark skin and large buttocks. Through the visual display of Black women within the European socio-cultural context, Black women were hyper-sexualized. They were seen as exuding excessive sexual prowess, which, in turn, left them subject to an unusual form of sexism. These Black women could be touched, photographed and even raped by Europeans. So when Sartre in Black Orpheus references poems that describe the nudity of Black women, he is in part participating in the socio-cultural European tradition which took an “objectifying” interest in the nudity of Black female bodies. Thus it is possible to admire the beauty of Black women while remaining sexist.

All things considered, the perspective of women is not integrated into the greater whole of Sartre’s analysis on colonial context of the Negritude movement. Sartre’s Black Orpheus omits the effects and experience of women in the Negritude movement. A close examination on the experience of Black women would have allowed Sartre to discover how, as Oyeronke Oyewumi notes, colonized women suffered from a “double colonization”, one from Europeanization and the other from indigenous tradition imposed by men of African descent.59 Black women then were socially placed into a double bind—one of gender and the other of race, which does not even Black men could experience.

The intersection among racial, cultural and gender oppression which characterizes the situation of colonized women is lost in Sartre’s analysis. Thus Sartre’s admission that the Negritude movement inverts the colonists’ ruse and espouses an anti-racist racism falls into just dangerous binary oppositions aligning as thesis/antithesis: White/Black, Bourgeois/Proletariat, and European/African. 60 The White/Black, Bourgeois/Proletariat, and European/African binaries, according to me, are overarched by the dialectic between the European man and the man of African descent. This dialectic is highly problematic and rather not gender neutral. By looking at the socio-political pairs of concepts that are constructed as opposite to each other, Sartre fails to acknowledge how these concepts are intersecting with one other. So, for example, if we were to look at the binary between European and Africans, we might fail to acknowledge how certain members of these individual groups—such as the men within each group—enjoy patriarchal rights over their female counterparts. Through this example then, which emphasizes patriarchal privileges instead of racial privileges, European men and African men have more in common than African men and African women. Thus Sartre, like the Black male poets, fails to give an intersectional account of how race and gender oppression intersect within the situation of Black women, and thereby places Black women in an even further situation of oppression that is not apparent

56 See (LaCapra, 1982, p. 27). 57 See (LaCapra, 1982, p. 27). 58 See (Eck, 2003, p. 705). 59 See (Oyewumi, 2006, p. 256). 60 See (Barber, 2001, p. 92).


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in the situation of European and African men.

Conclusion In this paper, I have presented three specific points in terms of Sartre’s analysis of “Negro poetry” of the

Negritude movement as featured in Black Orpheus. I first began by setting the stage for Sartre’s analysis that shows how the racial context between the relation of Europeans/Whites and Blacks influenced the literary and artistic developments of the Negritude movement. Through Sartre’s analysis of this cultural and political phenomenon, we see how Black male writers/authors/artists, by directing in part the Negritude movement towards Europeans and not just at Blacks, were able to put into question the power relationship between Whites and Blacks. Then specifically, I examined the literary and racial context of “Negro poetry” as Sartre referenced in Black Orpheus in order to show the political and cultural ingenuity of this literary and artistic form. Finally, in order to show the political and cultural changes that “Negro poetry” brought about—a movement, which gave the opportunity to Blacks to publically speak up against and in front of Europeans, the author focuses on how this poetic genre contributed to the changes in the image and representation of Black women. However, the analysis is quick to remark that despite the great efforts of the Black “male” poet, the representation and images of Black women in relation to how they intersect with these women’s racial, sex, and gender situations, need to be further developed and problematized by not only including the perspectives of Black female authors but of also including representation and images that challenge the patriarchal dominance of both White and Black men over Black women.

Despite the fact that I am critical of the segments of “Negro poetry” that she has presented in this paper, the author sees like Sartre, a cultural and political use value to the anti-racist developments of “Negro poetry” within the Negritude movement. At last, it enabled the Black “male” poet to speak up “without fear”, but with individual risks, social and political repercussions, and with a sense self-agency, against the White supremacist elements of White European dominant culture. And while I do not want to leave aside my feminist concerns against the Black “male” poet as described and analyzed by Sartre, I acknowledges, but with some failures, the Black “male” poet’s attempts to re-represent and re-imagine the situation of Black women free of not only racism but of also sexism.

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Multicultural Women’s Views on the First World War in Virginia

Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Denise Borille de Abreu Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

This year highlights the centenary of the outbreak of World War I and this paper aims at comparing and contrasting

multicultural views on the First World War in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925). The views on the First War

are portrayed by a plurality of voices, most of which are women’s, and they allow readers to think of the war

experience in a more subjective but also more plural way. In this novel, voices from both sides of the First War

resonate, i.e., the hegemonic side of the war—the Allies—is compared and contrasted to the subjectivity of the

voices of the “others”—the Axis, although they do not necessarily work in harmony. Such innovation in point of

view has, in great part, contributed to converging story and history, allowing this literary work to partake in the

production of historical knowledge and cultural memory of the War.

Keywords: women and war studies, English literature, the First World War, gender studies, trauma theory

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex Instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or protect either myself or my country. For, the outside will say, in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.

—Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1938)

Introduction

The subjectivity of women’s views on war is brought to a peak in Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Woolf, a Bloomsbury pacifist, established herself as an important novelist, influential essayist, reviewer, and feminist critic. Mrs. Dalloway was published in 1925, the same year as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Kafka’s The Trial.

The author hopes to show in this paper how modernist fiction’s innovation in point of view has, in great part, contributed to converging story and history. Ginzsburg and Hutcheon state unanimously that in some novels by Faulkner, Woolf, Proust, and Joyce, manipulation of a single point of view makes way for a multiplicity of voices, thus stressing the subjectivity that lies between story and history. Traditional omniscient historian-narrators, who used to prevail in 19th-century novels and, therefore, conveyed one-sided views, are replaced by a multitude of voices that allow pluralistic—and multicultural—views on war and imperialism to emerge. Literary writings may convey as much historical authenticity as historical narratives, insofar as emotional and personal experience is

Denise Borille de Abreu, M.A., Department of Literary Studies, Catholic University of Minas Gerais.

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also valid from the historical point of view, although it is not susceptible to traditional historical analysis. Hutcheon (1988) refers to historiographic metafiction as containing “not one single perspective but myriad

voices, often not completely localizable in the textual universe” (p. 160) and later suggests a kind of connection between the gaze or “eye” imposed by traditional narratives in opposition to the Modernist “I’s”, which are subjective and pluralizing (p. 161). This is true in relation to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, where the lives and views of multicultural characters, such as Italian immigrant Rezia and German immigrant Miss Kilman, coexist with the war views of British characters Elizabeth and Clarissa Dalloway, respectively, the wealthy daughter and the housewife of a member of parliament, whose views on war, however, come very close, in terms of substance, to the intensity of an ex-soldier’s drama, undergone by Septimus, and a history tutor from German ancestry, Miss Kilman, in postwar London.

The views on the First World War are portrayed by a plurality of voices, most of which are women’s, and the coexistence of reports by soldiers and civilians allows readers to think of the war experience in a more subjective but also more plural way. In this novel, voices from both sides of the First War resonate, i.e., the hegemonic side of the war—the Allies—is compared and contrasted to the subjectivity of the voices of the “others”—the Axis, although they do not necessarily work in harmony.

After having witnessed the cruelty of the war, all the characters put life and death into perspective. While having to deal with the aftermath of war, they feel, however, that their lives are pointless and the strokes of the clock appear to be a kind of doom they both have to face. Before this happens, though, the characters live parallel lives, marked by the postwar psychological impact of incertitude towards the future; mostly towards the coming hours. Clarissa’s perspectives on war are overlooked by her husband’s political views and she feels disturbed by not being able to display her opinions, or her feeling of existential fear, at her party, intimidated by social conventions. Big Ben’s tolling is frightening for it will always be a warning for a great change, either life or death. All the characters experience the wartime impact of fear and despair. No one can tell what the future will be like or if there will be one at all.

The Multiplicity of Women’s Voices About the First War in Mrs. Dalloway

Woolf’s association with the First War has mainly derived from her two novels Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse (1927), as well as her non-fiction work Three Guineas, published in 1938. In the first mentioned novel, though, the intricacies of the war drama lived simultaneously by a housewife and an ex-combatant, as well as the exposure of the war views of two women whose countries of origin belong to the Axis, lead us to think of the First War as a universal human experience. As a feminist activist, Woolf saw in war a series of patriarchal values through which women were oppressed and, as a pacifist, she was radically opposed to war and wrote about the wounds that victimize women, especially.

In Mrs. Dalloway, the representation of women as victims may be observed particularly in relation to the characters Lucrezia Smith and Doris Kilman. The former, an Italian immigrant in England, feels deprived of the right to express her frustration and resentment at the war. The latter, a woman of high education but belonging to a lower social class, lost her job during war. This was possibly due to her German ancestry and, in addition to the subordination to her employer, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, she refrains from sharing her opinions on war openly. Usui (1991) describes Woolf’s views of war and patriarchal oppression as follows:


The women who could do nothing but wait for their sons’, husbands’ and lovers’ return are finally confronted with their deaths, yet have to continue to live with grief and pain. The war, therefore, embodies patriarchy, which oppresses women’s true selves and deprives them of their voice. (p. 152)

Note that, in addition to being a foreigner, Lucrezia is in charge of assisting her shell-shocked husband, a frustrating attempt that culminated in the end of his life. Likewise, Kilman, after being “dismissed from school during war” (Woolf, 1996, p. 12) works as a tutor to Elizabeth, whose mother sees her as “a brutal monster”.

Concerning the representation of women as war victims, a mythical reference, as Usui ponders, is vividly portrayed in Clarissa, too. Her identification with St. Margaret surpasses the realm of religious devotion. Usui (1991) explains that:

St. Margaret’s in Mrs. Dalloway represents a dimension of women’s history that has been ignored and forgotten within male-dominated history. St. Margaret’s has been always in the shadow of Westminster Abbey as Clarissa is in the shadow of her husband. When Peter Walsh listens to St. Margaret’s bells, he remembers Clarissa’s voice “being the voice of the hostess” (Woolf, 1996, p. 74) and, at the same time, “reluctant to inflict its individuality” (Woolf, 1996, p. 74). Peter now discovers the reality of Clarissa’s and understands her agony behind it. St. Margaret has played an important role throughout British history, a political “hostess” as is Clarissa. (p. 154)

Although the bell toll is described as coming from St. Margaret’s, it is more likely to have resonated from Big Ben. The clock tower, rising above Westminster Palace, is closely related to the British Empire, given its physical proximity to the British Houses of Parliament. Also, its height may be read as a reinforcement of the hierarchy of power, a far more repressive symbol.1 About the British Empire and the time the First War broke out, Cornell West (1993) reminds us that: “By 1914, European maritime empires had dominion over more than half of the land and a third of the peoples in the world—almost 72 million square kilometres of territory and more than 560 million people under colonial rule” (p. 209).

Woolf was keen to explore the topics of victims and wounds as thoroughly as possible in the narrative. Although not necessarily affected by physical wounds, such as ex-soldiers who boast of their “honorable wounds”, women in wartime harbored silent wounds deeply in their breasts. The word “wound”, from the Greek, trauma, as well as the themes of oppression and grief, were key elements to Woolf’s writing about the war, and their resonance possibly reveals the author’s desire to air them. Bazin and Lauter (1991) associate the theme of wounds both to Woolf’s private life “The trauma of a series of deaths, first of immediate family and later of friends, coupled with the horror of two world wars had a similar impact on Woolf” (p. 18) and in relation to the characters in the novel:

In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf demonstrates the cost of war not only through the suffering of Septimus and his wife but also through unhappy experiences of minor characters and through the memories and thoughts of all her characters. Woolf sets the tone of postwar English life in the first few pages of the novel. (p. 18)

It seems reasonable that the wounds felt by Lucrezia and Kilman, whose countries of origin belong to the Axis, be paralleled. What is also surprising about Woolf’s novel is the conversion on the lives of an ex-soldier and a wealthy housewife. Woolf’s (1980) technique of converging characters’ lives is described by herself in a diary entrance: “I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity,

1 Information on these and other public places in London have been confirmed by The London Encyclopaedia (Weinreb & Hibbert, 1993).


humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect, and each comes to daylight at the present moment” (p. 213).

This writing process is defined by Scott (2005) as “tunneling” who reminds us that it is not until Clarissa’s party, or “the culmination of the plot” (p. lvi), that the trenches connecting Clarissa and Septimus are so dramatically shared. By the time the party occurs, Septimus has already committed suicide but, by contrast, Clarissa has never felt so alive, i.e., so deeply merged in the complexity of her thoughts on human existence. Scott (2005) points out that:

The party has a ghostly visitor in the form of Septimus Smith, and having heard of his death from the Bradshaws [one of whom was Septimus’ physician], Clarissa draws apart to accommodate him. She finds an affirmation of life from his throwing it away, her thoughts echoing his own feeling of the event. (p. lxvi)

Here is the point where the lives of Clarissa and Septimus are entrenched in the wounds that hurt both in silence, located in the mind, where the cost of war, that no one can precisely calculate, takes its toll. The wounds that connected both British characters may also be seen as an allusion to the collapse of the British Empire and the distress felt by the English people after the war.

Woolf’s literary achievement with Mrs. Dalloway has been acclaimed by critics such as Scott and Hynes who, respectively, paired her novel with the inventiveness of Joyce’s Ulysses (1993) and the poignancy of Eliot’s The Wasteland (1955). Scott (2005) cites as an example “the hallucinatory dramas of the ‘Circe’ brothel episode” (p. liv) that, in Woolf’s novel, would be relieved by different characters:

Septimus and Rezia Smith hear the repressive voice of proportion issuing from the mouth of the physician, Dr. Bradshaw. Septimus has hallucinatory episodes symptomatic of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, and Peter Walsh has a dream sequence, with a discourse of its own, while snoozing in the park. (p. liv)

Parallel to learning about the mysterious condition that has affected her husband’s mind, the mental breakdown that could be symptoms of madness2 or “not having a sense of proportion”, in the doctor’s words, Rezia struggles to understand why Septimus cannot give her a child; why she must remain in London, instead of going back to Italy and joining her mother and sister again in their happy hat-making business; why she has to suffer (Woolf, 1996, p. 54) and watch her husband’s irrevocable sorrow, prompted by his comrade’s death in the War, a week before the Armistice; why she, too, has to suffer because of the War.

Hynes (1991) enhances the historical vision of war in Woolf’s novel, compared to and described in the same extent of vividness as in Eliot’s poem:

Her subject was larger than a story of war; it was time, change, the irrevocability of loss, the ecstatic sharpness of the felt moment. But her novel is located in history, and like The Wasteland it has an historical vision. There was a time that was comfortable and happy, before war came with its cruelty and its madness, and ended all that. Now, in the world-after-the-war, the cruelty and madness remain; in the middle of the party, here’s death. (p. 345)

2 Concerning the psychological realism brought up by Mrs. Dalloway, Almeida’s theory of “transgression” appears to be a more valid hypothesis than the speculations of “madness” by Poole and Scott. Having Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill” as a basis for argumentation, she points out that Septimus and Clarissa “are already excluded from society through their ‘illness’”. The author refers, respectively, to Septimus’ shell-shock disorder and Clarissa’s “apparently recovering from some mysterious ailment that is often mentioned throughout the novel—‘she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness’ (4)” which confined her to an attic room (Almeida, 1994).


The passage elucidates how, in both novels, the modernist use of postwar subjective experiences conveys historical realism to the present moment. It illustrates, more importantly, the parallelism between literary and historical studies.

About fictional and historical narratives, the Finnish critic Pihlainen (2002) draws an interesting parallel by stating that:

In terms of metaphorical insight, the knowledge that historical narratives impart is therefore on a par with the “knowledge” that we receive from literature… That is, since both kinds of narratives provide us with “models of interpretative thought” they can both be seen as partaking in the production of knowledge. (p. 1)

It may be inferred that women war writings, especially Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, can be seen as partaking in the production of historical knowledge and cultural memory of the War. The novel contributes to expanding the multicultural reality of the two sides involved in the war, through a polyphonic interplay, in which voices from the Allies and the Axis are interpolated and interrelated.

Literary experiment, in Mrs. Dalloway, is parallel with the historical vision brought by the novel. Hutcheon (1988) recalls “Woolf and Joyce’s experiments with limited, depth vision in narrative” (p. 117). Again, Woolf and Joyce “exchange hats”—it may be observed that, in modernist novels, history is re-created by means of self-consciousness and psychological realism, not necessarily by claims of objective reality. In addition, the choice for writing a stream-of-consciousness novel, more specifically by means of indirect interior monologue, represents more than innovation on style: By recording the free expressions of the human mind, Woolf centers war on the core of human experience. It may also be observed that the use of focalization, on the depicted consciousness of characters from rival countries, stresses the impact and the loss suffered by both sides after the First War.

Class conflict appears constantly in the narrative, although it is certainly more emphasized between Clarissa and Miss Kilman, to whom Clarissa refers to as “a monster”. The divergences between them may be accounted for by their different economical and marital status and, symbolically, the two women are mainly represented by their clothes and, by implication, their appearance. In this sense, Clarissa is defined as a woman who inherited values of high taste from her wealthy family, as follows:

“That is all”, she repeated, pausing for a moment at the window of a glove shop where, before the War, you could buy almost perfect gloves. And her old Uncle William used to say a lady is known by her shoes and her gloves. He had turned on his bed one morning in the middle of the War. He had said, “I have had enough”. Gloves and shoes; she had a passion for gloves; but her own daughter, her Elizabeth, cared not a straw for either of them. (Woolf, 1996, p. 11)

It may be noted that Clarissa’s upper-class values go back to a time before the war. The following passage shows how Clarissa attacks her lower-class rival by describing her outfit. Again,

there is a reference to the War, to the time when it took place:

Miss Kilman would do anything for the Russians, starved herself for the Austrians, but in private inflicted positive torture, so insensitive was she, dressed in a green mackintosh coat. Year in year out she wore that coat; she perspired; she was never in the room five minutes without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich you were; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug or whatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance sticking in it, her dismissal from school during the War—poor embittered unfortunate creature! (Woolf, 1996, p. 12)


The two women diverge in social class and looks, they nurture reciprocal feelings of rivalry but they have in common love for Elizabeth Dalloway. War deprives Kilman of her job at school but renders her the role of Elizabeth’s private tutor. War connects the two characters, as in another example of Woolf’s “tunneling” process. Clarissa describes Kilman’s coat, constantly worn by her, as if it were some kind of uniform, or war’s masculinization of women’ bodies, the same war that coined the term “trench coat” and saw its wearing by women.3

Another curiosity about Kilman’s appearance is that her clothes are, in fact, described in a way that may resemble Greek warrior goddess Athena:

Odd it was, as Miss Kilman stood there (and stand she did, with the power and taciturnity of some prehistoric monster armoured for primeval warfare), how, second by second, the idea of her diminished, how hatred (which was for ideas, not people) crumbled, how she lost her malignity, her size, became second by second merely Miss Kilman, in a mackintosh, whom heavens knows Clarissa would have liked to help. (Woolf, 1996, p. 123)

Scott here sees an analogy to Britannia, the female symbol of the British Empire. However, it must be taken into consideration that Britannia is herself a Roman variation of Athena. Besides, the goddess after whom the kingdom was named is more likely to appear in a seated position, with trident and helmet.

It is noted that the reference to the armored goddess Athena, whose various tasks in the Homeric epics included warfare, is associated with the woman who is in charge of instructing Clarissa’s daughter, Elizabeth. Apart from having an in-depth historical background, “Her knowledge of modern history was thorough in the extreme” (Woolf, 1996, p. 122). Miss Kilman is Elizabeth’s tutor: “She did out of her meager income set aside so much for causes she believed in; whereas this woman did nothing, believed nothing; brought up her daughter—but here was Elizabeth, rather out of breath, the beautiful girl” (Woolf, 1996, p. 123). One of the reasons why Clarissa despises her is the possibility that her daughter’s views might be influenced by Kilman, or taken forth by Elizabeth, whose taste for studies and interest for the history of her country may suggest an analogy to Elizabeth I that surpasses the homonymic realm. The following passage refers to a lesson given by the tutor, about the War:

And she talked too about the war. After all, there were people who did not think the English invariably right. There were books. There were meetings. There were other points of view. Would Elizabeth like to come with her to listen to So-and-so? (a most extraordinary-looking old man). Then Miss Kilman took her to some church in Kensington and they had tea with a clergyman. She had lent her books. Law, medicine, politics, all professions are open to women of your generation, said Kilman. But for herself, her career was absolutely ruined, and was it her fault? Good gracious, said Elizabeth, no. (Woolf, 1996, p. 127)

As the passage stresses the complicity between teacher and student, it may be inferred that the mother-daughter relationship was compromised. In terms of identity, Kilman was closer than Clarissa to 3 This piece of information, which has become a kind of common-sensical allusion to World War I, turns out to have some validation: The trench-coat was designed in order to protect men fighting in the trenches from the cold. The Webster’s dictionary entry confirms that: “It is a descendant of the heavy serge coats worn by British, Canadian and French soldiers in World War I. Towards the Second World War, the trench coat became part of all enlisted men’s and officer’s kit, especially in the American forces: the US Army, US Army Air Corps, and the US Marine Corps” (Retrieved from http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/tr/trench+coat.html). The “Image Gallery” in the Imperial War Museum’s exhibition “Women and War” displays several WWI propaganda posters with women wearing trench coats, especially those belonging to Women’s Royal Naval Service and Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (Retrieved from IWM’s online image gallery: http://www.iwm.org.uk/upload/package/41/women/gallery4.html).


Elizabeth, and the educational background she acquired with her tutor would make Elizabeth’s history a more successful one, probably a doctor (Woolf, 1996, p. 133) in comparison with her tutor’s, ostracized in postwar England for her German ancestry.

Another critic, Usui (1991), has associated Miss Kilman with the feminists of the British suffrage movement, who opposed war and were mobilized “in peace groups in eleven European countries by 1915” (p. 159). Usui (1991) describes Kilman as follows:

Kilman, as the most of the radical feminists against the war, has no social rank or status. She is, however, a highly educated woman. Women’s higher education began to be reformed and encouraged with the establishment of Queen’s College for women in London in 1848 and of Bedford College in London in 1849. (p. 160)

It may be assumed, from this passage, that Elizabeth would inherit the cultural legacy of her teacher and, as a feminist doctor, do justice to her countrywomen’s tradition as military suffragettes, pioneered by Elsie Inglis and Louisa Garrett Anderson, for instance.

Through her knowledge and work, Kilman conquers the right to express herself during the lessons taught to Elizabeth. She earns the right to speak for the “other side of the war” to Elizabeth and it seems likely that the student will learn from her tutor’s legacy. Kilman’s “battle” is won as she assures herself what Spivak (1993) defines as: “a historical critique of your position as the investigating person, then you will see that you have earned the right to criticize, and you will be heard” (p. 197). In terms of war as cultural politics, Elizabeth’s instruction by Kilman may be said to represent the forsaking of imperialistic, hegemonic views, and a new attitude towards the formulation of a pluralistic and multicultural political perspective, contrary to her parents’ beliefs; a breakthrough with the imperialistic paradigm.

Conclusion

Despite the scale of mass destruction, the First War brought unprecedented work opportunities for women. Historian Keith Robbins (2002) reminds us about women’s significant insertion in the workforce during the War years and presents figures that demonstrate how the number of employed women oscillated, in a comparative scale, from 1914 to the four coming years:

There were, for example, 125 women working at Woolwich Arsenal in 1914 and 25,000 in July 1917. Three and a quarter million British women were employed in July 1914 and a little under 5 million at the close of war – the expansion being most rapid in the middle years. In France by late 1918 half a million women were directly working in war industries and some 150,000 occupied secretarial and other ancillary positions in the army. Both of these figures represented a major change from the position in 1914. (p. 161)

Robbins (2002) highlights, however, that women’s jobs were considered under-paid in comparison with men’s. Women’s lower wages generated social debate in England and they “led to awkward questions being asked about equal pay, which trade union officials found scarcely more congenial than their employers did” (p. 161).

Although women’s salaries were still far from being satisfactory, the figures shown by Robbins lead us to think that career opportunities for women were in a constant raise. More importantly, debates on equal income had been launched. Having been granted possibilities of emancipation and self-support, postwar English women reveled in the idea of independence.


In conclusion, it may be stated that, although the reality of the dominant Allies is the ground that prevails in the novel, in Mrs. Dalloway war is presented through a two-dimensional paradigm. This multiplicity of perspectives (e.g., war seen in the point of view of British people, contrasted with the point of view of immigrants from the Axis) prevents the use of what West (1993) defines as “marginalizing and reductionist ideologies” in the novel (p. 214). One thing all the characters had in common, the experience of fear and incertitude towards the future, appears to come as a result of the fact that, no matter from which side of the war their countries were fighting, they all saw, in the aftermath of the First War, the beginning of a negative shift on the European power balance, or, in the words of West (1993), the dawn of “the last European century—the last epoch in which European domination of most of the globe was uncontested and unchallenged in a substantive way—a new world seemed to be stirring” (p. 206).

References Almeida, S. R. G. (1994). Writing from the place of the O (O) ther: The poetic discourse of transgression in the works of Virginia

Woolf, Clarice Lispector and Teolinda Gersão (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Bazin, N. T., & Lauter, J. H. (1991). Woolf’s keen sensitivity to war: Its roots and its impact on her novels. In M. Hussey (Ed.),

Virginia Woolf and war: Fiction, reality, and myth (pp. 14-39). New York: Syracuse UP. Eliot, T. S. (1955). The waste land and other poems. Fort Washington: Harvest Books. Ginzburg, C. (1999). History, rethoric, and proof. Walthan: Brandeis UP. Hutcheon, L. (1988). A poetics of postmodernism: History, theory, fiction. New York: Routledge. Hynes, S. (1991). A war imagined: The First World War and English culture (p. 345). New York: Atheneum. Joyce, J. (1993). Ulysses. Oxford: OUP. Pihlainen, K. (2002). The moral of the historical story: Textual differences in fact and fiction. New Literary History, 33, 39-60. Poole, R. (1991). We all put up with you Virginia: Irreceivable wisdom about war. In M. Hussey (Ed.), Virginia Woolf and war:

Fiction, reality, and myth (pp. 79-100). New York: Syracuse UP. Robbins, K. (2002). The First World War. Oxford: OUP. Scott, B. K. (2005). Introduction. Mrs. Dalloway (pp. xxxv-lxviii). Orlando: Harcourt. Spivak, G. C. (1993). Questions of multiculturalism. In The cultural studies reader (p. 197). London: Routledge. Usui, M. (1991). The female victims of the war in Mrs. Dalloway. In M. Hussey (Ed.), Virginia Woolf and war: Fiction, reality, and

myth (p. 152). New York: Syracuse UP. Weinreb, B., & Hibbert, C. (1993). The Encyclopaedia of London. London: Macmillan. West, C. (1993). The new cultural politics of difference. In The cultural studies reader (pp. 203-207). London: Routledge. White, H. (1978). Tropics of discourse: Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP. Woolf, V. (1938). Three Guineas. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. Woolf, V. (1979). The diary of Virginia Woolf (Vol I). A. O. Bell (Ed.). Fort Washington: Harvest Books. Woolf, V. (1980). The diary of Virginia Woolf (Vol II). A. O. Bell (Ed.). Fort Washington: Harvest Books. Woolf, V. (1989). To the lighthouse. Fort Washington: Harvest Books. Woolf, V. (1996). Mrs. Dalloway. London: Penguin Books.


A Contemporary Turkish Composer: Mete Sakpınar

Esra Karaol

Istanbul University State Conservatory, Istanbul, Turkey

Mete Sakpınar, who was born in Ankara, May 5, 1954, is a contemporary Turkish composer. His compositions

were played in various countries like Turkey, France (1980-1983), Canada, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Hungary,

Albania, Belgium, Holland, and German, and he also joined lots of seminars, radio, and television programs. His

inspirational sources are traditional Turkish music, modern French music, American cultural traditions, as well as

jazz, acoustic, and electronic music. His music, in summary, is about taking a little from tonality, twelve-note

system, coincidences, improvisations, etc., and joining them with his own experiences like emotions, knowledge,

and intelligence. Sakpınar always defends that the composer of the day has to benefit from lots of various sources.

He is doing this as well as trying new forms in every new piece. It does not matter if these are tonal, atonal, serial,

or modal but it must be personal. All the borders and capacities of the instruments have to be forced.

Keywords: contemporary Turkish composer, Mete Sakpınar, modern composing

Introduction Mete Sakpınar and his brother Ender, who became a conductor, were trained for music and painting while

they were five years old. His parents Hasbiye and Sadi Sakpınar were both opera artists in Ankara, so he took

his first piano lessons with his mother. Then, he studied solfege and harmony with Firuzan Saydam and Metin

Öğüt. His mother, born in 1923, began studying at Ankara State Conservatory in 1942 and graduated in 1945

from the Opera Department. Then, she entered the Ankara State Opera. His father, born in 1918, entered the

Ankara State Conservatory in 1937 and graduated in 1945. Then, he entered the Ankara State Opera and

worked as a soloist tenor in lots of operas. He was also as a student of Leopold Levy, graduated from the

Academy of Fine Arts and he is still working on painting.

Figure 1. Mete Sakpınar.

Sakpınar enrolled at the Ankara State Conservatory in 1975 and studied harmony, counterpoint, and fugue

with Ercivan Saydam and piano with Gülay Uğurata. He entered Mimar Sinan University State Conservatory in

Esra Karaol, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Musicology, Istanbul University State Conservatory.

DAVID PUBLISHING

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1978, and graduated from the composition class of İlhan Usmanbaş in 1979. He went to Paris in 1980 and

became a student of Ecole Normale de Musique, where he studied composition under Tony Aubin and Jacques

Casterede, and conducting under Dominique Roitz and Gerard Devos. While living in Paris, Sakpınar also

gained a three-year experience in conducting with a big chamber orchestra about 45 members. In 1981, the jury

of Paris gave him a reward about composition and fugue in Ecole Normale de Musique. He received his license

degree from the composition department of this institution in 1983 and went to the US, founding the New York

Concertante Orchestra there in 1984. He was the conductor and artistic director of this ensemble until 1986.

Sakpınar (see Figure 1) entered the Composition Department of Juilliard School of Music in 1985, where he

received master’s degree from the composition class of Milton Babbitt. He also studied electronic music with

Donald Howe. At the same time, he worked on his doctorate thesis in Istanbul University. Between the years

1985-1987, his compositions had been started being performed in Juilliard Symphony. In addition, he directed

an art gallery in New York East Village from 1988 to 1991. Some of his electronic music studies were played

in New York Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, National Public Radio (1988), Chicago Film Festival (1989), and

Ankara Contemporary Music Festival (1990-1991). Since 1991, he has been teaching composition and fugue

lessons in the Composition Department of Istanbul University State Conservatory.

Figure 2. Spatial.

He combines electronic sound materials with acoustics in some of his main compositions. There are about

30 electronic and chamber music, five symphonies such as Tri-minor (1987), which was played by Juilliard


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Symphony Orchestra in New York in 1987. Transfusion, Focus, Proton, Atasal, four electro-acoustic pieces,

two piano concertos (1985/1998), Avalanche (1992), sextet for wind instruments, concerto for strings and

percussions (Swingle Turtle), Hyper-Flute for flute and tape band, and concerto for two pianos (1997). He also

wrote some music for theatre like Nazım Hikmet’s play “Ferhat ile Şirin” in 1991, Gogol’s play in 1993, and

Kenter’s play “Hep Aşk Vardı” in 2000, and some documentaries like “Hello Modern Turkey” that is related

with all Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s revolutions for Turkish Radio Television channel in 1996. Some of his

symphonic pieces were played in Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra concerts like Transfusion, Focus, Proton,

and Spatial (see Figure 2) (its third movement was dedicated to Schostakovich), etc.

Compositions His compositions have been effective on the progress of the modern, contemporary, and electronic music.

Before coming back to Turkey, his music was in more apolitical style (he was rather interested the relationship

between natural and artificial sounds), but after seeing the negative changes in his country, he was more

influenced of the way of writing universal and political like the compositions Proton and Atasal (1994). He, in

general, does not want to belong to any trend because he believes that all of them will be passed away someday.

All he tries to achieve is using them for a specific purpose without being obsessed. In his reports from 1995, he

explains that his admiration sources are coming from Bach because of his flexible music. It is more obvious to

see the fastidious flexibility especially in his solo or chamber music works more than the orchestral ones. His

orchestral pieces, considering all of them last from 11-16 minutes, provide the organic unity. He is assertive

that there is no any other avant-garde example in this kind of individual source. Sakpınar thought Bach would

always be on top and when he was listening to his music, he feels like the world has changed and goes another

dimension.

After the short biography and general point of view of Mete Sakpınar’s music, it will be examined

contemporary aspects of some of his principal works with chronological order besides the short musical

analysis.

Lieds in Italian

This piece (see Figure 3), written in 1982, develops the discipline of the indeterminacy philosophy that

comes upper surface and moves ahead. The most important newest technique is singing while breathing and

trying to go to the high-pitched sound with symmetrical accents between the parts. Indeterminacy is formed

because of the inexistency of written pitches while sighing and the linear and vertical components of music are

reaching the virtual dimension of dividing doubling against triplets.

Three Pieces for Piano This piece was written in 1986. The most characteristic of the piece is to hear three layers at the same time

rhythmically. The cells are processed at the same time from three different layers. Each layer has different

dynamics and intervallic worth as mezzo-forte on the top, forte in the middle and piano at the bottom or with

open, close, and silence one after another.

Dilara It was written in 1988 and performed in Carnegie Hall by Sevgi Topyan, in which there are lots of

different combinations in this piece (see Figure 4) for solo piano. These formations consecutively constitute

colors that are different from each other with variant dimensions. Basically, the piece is trying to describe a


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baby’s birth (it was written for his nephew Dilara’s birthday by the way) and because of that, all complex and

calm components are completing each other.

Figure 3. Miniaturisation.


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Figure 4. Dilara.

Transfusion In this piece (see Figure 5), composed in 1991, Sakpınar determines the broadened orchestra staff with the

fullness of nature, the transitions of the cut parts to the dependence, the arrival of the untidiness to the ordered

system with an attractive orchestration. It processes skillfully the relationship of individuality, nature and

society.

Figure 5. Transfusion.


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Focus This piece (see Figure 6), written in 1992, lasting about 10 minutes, reflects French impressionism, jazz,

with accented rhythms and minimalist effects in it. Its music, in general, can be described as tensioned group

combinations with powerful double fortes, jazzy improvisations, emotional/melodic solos, descending

fugato/crescendos, etc… Sakpınar says,

Everybody has they own reality, all of us live as different focuses in our lives. Our thoughts are the sources of our dreams. I tried to give the unchanged effects of our lives in a different cultural synthesis as complete. We cannot achieve more that just being ‘relative’ with our definite judgments in this variable universal system. Because of this reason, I created a form that has the harmony, which constitutes the absolute focal points in an unlimited oneiric relativity, and the argument concepts in it. Hoping to add the new ones to our dreams… (personal communication, n.d.)

Figure 6. Focus.


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Avalanche This piece was written in New York in 1992 for chamber music ensemble (flute, violin, viola, violoncello,

piano, and percussion). The work, written for strings, piano, and percussion, was also played in Michigan, USA.

It was also played at Vienna Modern Music Festival in November, 1998 together with Swingle Turtle. Its

dynamic and energetic structure is coming from a disaster that occurs in a village of Erzurum a few years ago

therefore, there were many people who had been injured. Sakpınar felt that the emotion of “Avalanche” was a

cleaning process of nature in a way.

Proton It is a symphonic mixture of electronic and acoustic music. The piece (see Figure 7), which was composed

in 1993, is for a college work for orchestra and electronic tape. The main theme was born from a Bosnian folk

song also used in Emir Kusturica’s movie Time of the Gypsies (1988). The percussion heard in the middle of

the theme, reflects the militaries pressure and then music calm down with the other orchestral instruments.

According to the explanation of the composer himself, it is a “Sur-National” work that is against for the

“Neo-Nationalist” trend. In this 13 minutes piece, there are lots of differentiations like tonal, atonal, serial,

minimal and electronic elements. Proton was written for the people who had been murdered in

Bosnia-Herzegovina because of the pressured ideologies of the wars. With the crystallization of the folk song, it

is symbolized the ethnical separations hearing the percussions acoustically. The link that provides coming back

is heard from the whole orchestra elements. The entering of the development, which consists of the repetitions,

tells the unstopping attendance and the effects of the tape creating the voice of the war “instruments”.

Figure 7. Proton.


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Swingle Turtle The inspirational source of the piece (see Figure 8), was written in 1994, Istanbul, for his students—a

turtle. The short, quick, and intensive part of this work is to exhibit the characteristics of each instrument

(violin, trumpet, violoncello, piano, and percussion). Present Music performed it in Cemal Reşit Rey

Contemporary Music Festival. The compositional technique happens from the contrapuntal relationships of

sounds. Sakpınar used minimum elements of the whole voice scale in some parts. He tried to make the

symphonic density disappear and used voices, models, “Makamsal” shapes and melodic concepts that were

unifying the piece. The performing concept of this piece requires the individual capacities of performers

besides the necessities to have following vertically the score, knowing, understanding, and being in a harmony

with each other so the musicians must be free in a disciplined relationship both in their performances and the

others’.

Figure 8. Swingle Turtle.

Atasal This symphonic poem (see Figure 9), which is for orchestra with electronic tape collage and lasting about

11 minutes, was written in 1994 for memory of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and also to show the respect and

devotion to his love by nation. Its premiere was in the date of December 16, 1994 by Istanbul State Symphony

Orchestra in Istanbul Technical University. Sakpınar explains the work’s message as “it is necessary to recall

Atatürk’s principles and apply them today in urgency” (personal communication, n.d.). The movement begins

with bass line motions and it is transformed to an ironic theme later on. First, the theme is heard very simple

and then it is encircled to the whole tissue in a rising tension. The second part of the piece contains the 10th

year speech with Atatürk’s own voice. This collage’s aim is to announce the instability and the quietness of the

community in a “Neo-grotesque” way. While Atatürk is talking, there are no any other instrumental

accompanying and no change on his voice. His talking is linked to the group of acoustic instruments with rich

accompaniment of electronic effects in the end. There is a dynamic, sometimes neo-classic, atonal, and

mysterious effect in the entire work. He uses a language that has lots of colors in it. Using the rustling with

sound or the radio waves coming from the past which is questioning consciously is collaged over Atatürk’s

original voice and them, the rustling comes back to the contrabasses. The repetition of the ironic theme, which

is heard from different group of instruments also tells being inability of humankind and the affects of the

danger. From the critical point of view, the enthusiasm is a bit exaggerated.


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Figure 9. Atasal.

Valssimo Composed in 1994, the piece was planned as an encore piece for piano solo. The atonal composition,

starting with wide intervals, is transformed to a sarcastic waltz in a limited area. The waltz ends in “A” form

that comes again at the end.

Hyper-flute This piece (see Figure 10), which was composed in 1994, is dedicated for flutist Günay Yetiz, with the

accompaniment of electronic tape. Thus, both electronic and acoustic sounds are exhibited together. The solo

flute is competing with the background sound of the synthesizer. They are sometimes in contrast and

sometimes in harmony. It is not only the music of tape is a duet with flute’s row, but also the flute includes the

tape’s characteristic sound. The metallic sound of the flute is combining with the mechanical voice of tape.

Actually, it invites the listener dreaming a forest. While, it is perceived that the intensity of the forest in the

electronic sound with all the bird, water, and board voices, the concrete sound of the flute catches the short

living time. The atonal dataset is coming together with some tonal link. These tonal links are symbolizing the

primitive living style as few, pure, repeated, and undeveloped but existing. Before and after the irritating

sounds of electronic tape, it is used a technique that reflects the soft tunes in flute and repeating passages that

reflects again the talent and condition of the performer or bordered and difficult mathematical, canonic real

time usage with tape.


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Figure 10. Hyper-flute.

Contre Value Composed in 1998, the piece (see Figure 11) is for an electronic tape and violin (for Cihat Aşkın). It is

based on both the nature acoustic characteristic of violin and reflection of the electronic sounds basically.

Figure 11. Contre value.


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Mayıs Türküsü This folk song (see Figure 12), written in 1999 for TRT, is a piece that reflects the local philosophy and

sub-dynamics of unity, which was motivated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This capella work was written for the

Turkish Was of Independence and it causes the rising of chromatic motions. Datum that presents various

traditions by different rhythm and series chronically creates a new discipline towards the necessities of

harmony. All the voice effects are a kind of train that travels all over Turkey. This unity, which was synthesis

of various Makams’ realizations, presents the abstract in the beginning as a superior worth at the end.

Figure 12. Mayıs Türküsü.

Conclusion The main achievement of this paper is examining Mete Sakpınar’s music out of analyzing some of his

compositions. It is presented the several main works that reflects some of his music with analytical point of


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view. His 14 works and 11 music examples given here reflect some personal materials he used in general.

Forcing the capacities is the key of composing contemporary.

As a conclusion, the main point of the contemporary aspects is using the materials putting them together

with minds. The combination of several aesthetics together reflects the composer’s accumulation. His

philosophy is more inclusive, less obsessed on the new.

References Ilyasoğlu, E. (1998). Contemporary turkish composers. Istanbul: Pan Yayıncılık. Polat, R. (1998). İstanbul Müzik Şenliği 2 (Istanbul Music Festivity). İstanbul, Turkey. Birkan, Ü. (2000). Dinleyicinin kitabi (The book of the listener). Istanbul: Borusan Kültür ve Sanat Yayınları. Yener, F. (1991). Değişik Kaynaklardan Değişik Sesler (Different voices from different resources). İstanbul: Milliyet. Birkan, Ü. (1993). Sakpınar’lar (The Sakpınars). Istanbul: Milliyet-Sanat. Yalazan, A. E. (1995). Mete Sakpınar. İstanbul: Hürriyet-Tempo. Kayabal, A. (1995). Bosna Senfonisi (The bosnian symphony). İstanbul: Yeni Yüzyıl. Sigahler, B. G. (1997). Modern Çağın Müziği Hakkında (About modern age music). İstanbul: Global.

Appendix: List of Mete Sakpınar’s Principal Works

Orchestra

Tri-minor suite, 1987.

Transfusion, 1991.

Focus, 1992.

Atasal, 1994.

Spatial, 2000.

Concerto

Piano Concerto No.1, 1985.

Atatürk for two pianos, strings and percussion, 1997.

Piano Concerto No.2, 1998.

Chamber Music

Sonata for violin and piano, 1981.

Dance Music in three movements with piano, clarinet, double bass and percussion, 1982.

String Quintet, 1982.

Miniaturisation, 1983.

String Quartet No.2, 1983.

Fantasy for eight flutes, 1983.

Prelude for piano and clarinet, 1984.

Sextet for woodwinds, 1989.

Avalanche, 1992.

Swingle Turtle, 1994.

Voice and Piano

Alcohol for baritone (poem: Appolinaire), 1981.

Lieds in Italian for soprano and tenor (poems: Carlo Arcuri), 1982.

Chorus

Mayıs Türküsü (TRT Youth Choir), 2000.


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Yılkı (TRT Youth Choir), 2002.

Solo Instruments

Antiseria for clarinet, 1983.

Three Pieces for piano, 1986.

Dilara, 1988.

Delidolu for flute, 1993.

Valssimo, 1994.

Hyper-Flute, 1994.

Aurora for guitar, 1996.

Contre Value, 1998.

Scene Music

“Ferhat ile Şirin” music for Nazım Hikmet’s play (first time in USA theatres), 1992.

“Bir Delinin Hatıra Defteri” music for Gogol’s play, 1993.

“Hep Aşk Vardı” music for Yıldız Kenter’s play, 2000.

Dance Music and Electronic Tape

On the way home, 1989.

Prism, 1991.

Köm’ür, 1993.

There is nobody, 1993.

Kara/an (dedicated to Uğur Mumcu), 1995.

Film Music

“Gün Işığı” short film, 1996.

Documentary Music

Hello modern Turkey, 1996.

Living is no laughing matter, 1998.


The Kind of Virgin That Keeps a Parrot: Identity, Nature, and

Myth in a Painting by Hans Baldung Grien

Bonnie J. Noble University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, USA

The 16th-century Protestant Reformation shattered the foundations of faith and art. As traditional theology was

both besieged and defended, art had to adapt. Of course, a new theology needed new kinds of pictorial

extrapolations. But truly, the most interesting change was hidden in plain sight. Subjects that may have looked

familiar were in fact utterly new, because subversive ideas and contexts uprooted older meanings. The painting

Madonna with Parrots (1533), by Hans Baldung Grien demoted the chaste protectress by transforming her into a

flawed, even dangerous, human mother. In the painting, an oddly sultry Virgin shows off her breast, her shoulder,

and her chest as a parrot nibbles her neck. The complexities of Baldung’s painting underpin debates about the status

of the Virgin during the Reformation and the freedom of an artist to tamper with sacred subject matter.

Keywords: Virgin, Madonna, Reformation, Witch, Hans Baldung Grien, Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? —Chico Marx,

Duck Soup (1933)

…it is more fruitful to ask how works of art pose problems and provoke reflection rather than to ask how they call forth unequivocal judgments of condemnation or praise.

—Margaret Carroll, Painting and Politics in Northern Europe (2008)

Introduction The “Madonna with Parrots” (Germanisches National museum, Nuremberg) of 1533 by Hans Baldung

Grien (1484/5-1545) presents the Virgin Mary in half length in the company of a parrot and a parakeet (see Figure 1).1 The “Madonna with Parrots” may at first seem to be a fairly familiar, 16th-century, half-length Madonna, the likes of which appear in both Italy and the North. A young Virgin Mary with thin features and long hair holds Christ at her breast while an angel peeks over her right shoulder. Yet, after a moment or two, the painting starts to look odd. A Congo African Gray Parrot (Psittacus erithacus) perches on the Virgin’s shoulder (It appears deceptively green in reproductions) and nibbles at her neck. The Virgin acquiesces to this unusual exchange by inclining her head, a gesture that moves beyond mere tolerance to complicity. She appears more responsive to the parrot’s advances, and more engaged with the viewer, with whom she locks eyes, than

Bonnie J. Noble, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Art and Art History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

1 Albrecht Dürer did business with traders in Antwerp, exchanging drawings for bird feathers and parrots, among other things Baldung may have known live parrots as well, see Weber am Bach (2006, p. 131). The picture is dated 1533 on the frame. It was acquired by the Germanisches National museum in 1525 but has no clear provenance (Weber am Bach, 2006, p. 113).

DAVID PUBLISHING

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THE KIND OF VIRGIN THAT KEEPS A PARROT

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with her son, to whom she pays no attention. A Ring Necked Parakeet, (Psittacula krameri), either a juvenile or a female because of the faint color of the neck ring, gazes up at the Virgin from the lower left corner.2 The parakeet anchors a diagonal across the body of the Virgin, leading the viewer’s eye from lower left to upper right, along the line implied by the Virgin’s pale arm and hand, toward the breast and up to the Gray Parrot on the upper right. The Virgin’s exposed flesh fills much of the composition, as she positions her right hand at her chest. This arrangement of motifs identifies the birds as attributes of the Virgin, not of Christ. The Gray Parrot rests against her skin, not her garment, making the contact all the more sensual. The vulnerability of Mary’s exposed neck, her beckoning glance, the attention drawn to her skin, not to mention the menacing expression of the angel in the upper left corner, disconcert the beholder.

Figure 1. Madonna with Parrots.3 Source: adapted from wikimedia. Germanisches National Museum, Nürnberg.

Foto: D. Messberger.

Whatever the nature of this curious Virgin, art historians agree that she is unsettling.4 Scholars have provided no satisfactory interpretation of the picture. Some see her as a disguised representation of a classical figure, especially Venus.5 Others see this and Baldung’s other Madonna images of the period as doctrinally flexible pictures suited for the worship by Catholics and Protestants alike (Heal, 2007, 2001; von der Osten, 1983), while still others see the picture as the exact opposite, as narrowly supportive of the Lutheran Eucharist (Weber am Bach, 2006). Still others see the “Madonna with Parrots” as an aesthetic experiment (Baldung, Marrow, & Shestack, 1981). One scholar proposes that the painting expresses the thought of the Florentine Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino (as cited in Schütte, 2000).

2 On African Gray Parrots, see Pepperberg (2008). Weber am Bach (2006), notes the unusual inclusion of two birds instead of one (p. 131). On Gray parrots as elite gifts in Reformation Germany, see Boehrer (2010 p. 78). Boehrer observe sabout parrot symbolism that in Baldung’s painting “the resulting shift arguably reflects tensions in the nature of post-Reformation iconography” (p. 86). 3 The work of art depicted in this image and the reproduction thereof is in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. 4 On the historiography of Baldung, see Weber am Bach (2006, pp. 13-15). 5 The most recent proponent of this position is Weber am Bach (2006, pp. 164-188).


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Baldung’s Virgin is not simply ecumenical, classical, or aesthetically challenging. The following argument will demonstrate that the Virgin’s very nature has been profaned in Baldung’s picture. Baldung is famous for making pictures that push against conventions with violence, sexual perversion, titillation, or macabre fascination. In keeping with his proclivity for artistic subversion, Baldung’s “Madonna with Parrots” defies the conventions of Madonna imagery. In the context of the aggressive misogyny of much of Baldung’s art, this profaned Madonna warns viewers about the dangers of all women, even the Virgin. With their associations of speech without meaning, paradise, and both the Virgin and Eve, parrots communicate sensuality and danger. On the conflicted history of parrot symbolism, see Boehrer’s Animal Characters: Nonhuman Beings in Early Modern Literature (2010). Not surprisingly, the paradisiacal and exotic symbolism of the parrot within Catholic tradition is subverted during the Reformation, when the parrot comes to symbolize senseless repetition (pp. 77-87).

The “Madonna with Parrots” shares gestures with traditional representations of Venus, linking the eroticism of the Roman goddess of love to the traditionally chaste Virgin. The Virgin’s relationship to Eve is no longer part of the traditional Eve-Mary dichotomy, but becomes sisterly instead.

Thematizing controversial, topical anxieties is a hallmark of the art of Hans BadungGrien. Depicting such provocative subjects helped Baldung distinguish himself from other artists, especially his more famous contemporary, Albrecht Dürer. Specifically, as the author’s argument will demonstrate, Baldung brands the “Madonna with Parrots” as his own work by questioning or even depriving her of her holiness, profaning her in the most literal sense.6

The author’s argument will be based on the following four points: (1) The picture’s perplexing mood and iconography coincide with 16th-century anxieties about women, as expressed in imagery related to the later witch hunts; (2) The picture crystalizes theological debate about the status of the Virgin during the Reformation, particularly regarding her loss of holy status and her relationship to Eve; (3) Compositional parallels between Baldung’s painting and images of Venus propose conceptual parallels between the Roman goddess of love and the Mother of Christ; and (4) The inclusion of both parrot and parakeet in an unorthodox depiction of the Madonna also helped Baldung consolidate his artistic identity in the context of evolving notions of art in the 16th century.

Hans Baldung Grien (c. 1484/5-1545) spent most of his career in the city of Strasbourg (Brady, 1975, pp. 295-315; Koerner, 1993, p. 357). As a young man, he was employed as an assistant in the workshop of none other than Albrecht Dürer from 1503-1507 (Koerner, 1993, p. 250).7 Baldung moved to Strasbourg in 1509 and in 1510 married and established a workshop (Hults, 2005, p. 77).8 During his prosperous career, he worked in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, woodcut, and design for stained glass (Baldung, Marrow, & Shestack, 1981). He was commissioned to paint a grand altarpiece of the Virgin for the altar of the Cathedral in Freiburg, between 1512 and 1516 (Hults, 2005, p. 85).9 Much of Baldung’s work in Strasbourg tends to be

6 Other scholars have observed a profanation, or more accurately a secularization, in Baldung’s Virgin pictures. See (Weber am Bach, 2006, pp. 14, 16, 143; Bussmann, 1966, p. 132; Hugelshofer, 1969, p. 36). 7 For a succinct overview of Baldung’s biography, see Hults (2005, pp. 75-78). 8 For a reliable overview of the life and career of Hans Baldung Grien, see Baldung (2009, pp. 115-118) and von der Osten (1983, pp. 13-33). 9 Hults observes connections between Baldung’s witch and Virgin imagery as well. Writing about some of his early drawings of witches and the Freiburg Altar, Hults observes “If Baldung’s High Altar venerated the Virgin, these drawings denigrated her inverse in a pornography that reduced intellectuals, artists, and even clerics into a low level—but never so low as the female witch. For in responding to and rejecting such baseness, the male subject reconstructed himself” (Hults, 2005, p. 91). The “Madonna with Parrots” arguably carries out both tasks in a single image, veneration and denigration.

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Parrots also appear in images of the Fall. One of the most famous examples in Northern art is Albrecht Dürer’s 1504 engraving (see Figure 2), where a parrot appears on the tree limb above Dürer’s signature. Dürer’s 1502 drawing of a parrot reappears in reversed form in his 1504 engraving of the Fall of Humanity (Eisler, 1991, p. 268). The appearance of parrots in scenes of both the Fall and in Madonna pictures suggests that their meaning depends on context. The presence of parrots in images of the Fall and of the Virgin may play on the idea that a parrot’s call sounds like Eva/Ave, which in turn refers to the idea of the Virgin as the new Eve.13 The call of a parrot may also resemble the Ave of Gabriel at the Annunciation (as cited in Schreiner, 1994, p. 14). Parrots may signify virginity because their feathers are impervious to water.14 Or parrots may be associated with paradise lost and regained (Eisler, 1991, pp. 32-33), because they are tropical.

Parrots have other kinds of more negative meanings, for instance Aristotle’s association of parrots with sexuality, an idea possibly known among Humanists in the city of Strasbourg where Baldung spent most of his career; and the parrot’s red tail also appears phallic.15 Martin Luther (1483-1546) saw parrots as symbols of deception. For instance, in the Table Talk, the supposed conversations that took place at table in at Luther’s home, the following is attributed to Luther: “I believe the devil resides in parakeets and parrots …because they can imitate people” (Luther, 1912-1921, pp. 4, 687).16 The seemingly human voice may not be human at all. What our ears tell us may be a lie. This quote reveals anxiety about the limitations and deceptions of information acquired through the senses, as we will see in the discussion below.

Such anxieties about perception and truth may have felt familiar and topical to the educated viewers of Baldung’s pictures, including his images of witches, for which he is best known, as well as Madonna pictures. The very act of looking becomes anxious if the viewer questions the reliability of perception. The Virgin in the “Madonna with Parrots” appears real. She has mass and volume, plausible human proportions, and believably rendered hair, skin and clothing. And yet, the scenario in its entirety is a fiction. No human eye could ever encounter such a scene. This tension between retinal description and fictitious content is a truism of much Renaissance art. 17 Angels and devils take up space and walk through believable spaces. Even more complicating is the inescapable truth that the aspects of the image that appear to describe a subject or scene “accurately” are themselves tools of deception. What appears to be an object in space is a two-dimensional illusion that uses variations of color to create an illusion of light and shadow. The “Madonna with Parrots” asks viewers to reconcile the tensions among made-up subject matter, the illusion of reality, and the deceptions that are the tools of that illusion. Even more vexing is the added complication of expectation; visual elements connoting seduction, such as the Virgin’s unexpectedly naked shoulder and slit-eyed expression, subvert

13 On the idea that the parrot announces the coming of the Virgin, see Eisler (1991, p. 39), and Weber am Bach (2006, p. 134). 14 On Eva/Ave, see Cohen (2008, pp. 49-50, 112). Eva/Ave supports the broader idea of the Virgin as a complex symbol embracing contradictory meanings. On associations of the parrot with purity and the medieval east, see Cohen (2008, p. 50). On parrots and water, see Eisler (1991, pp. 39, 268). 15 Weber am Bach (2006) notes also that a peculiar bit of flesh is visible in the parrot’s mouth. Sexual associations with parrots extend back Aristotle, and may been known to Baldung (p. 135). For a general discussion of the functions of parrots in various aspects of culture during the Renaissance, see Boehrer (2004, pp. 50-73). 16 Hereafter cited as WA TR (Weimarer Ausgabe Tischreden). Pepperberg’s (2008) ground-breaking research has proven that parrots do not merely imitate but actually understand words and use words to communicate. 17 Belting (1994) explains the artist’s dilemma of representing fictional subjects according to “the laws of perception” where fictional, mythological subjects are depicted to seem optically descriptive (p. 472). Belting (1994) explains the retroactive skepticism that comes from this viewing situation: “The new themes, which had no reality of their own in a literal sense, now affected the way images in general were seen. If what they depicted was based on fiction, the older themes (images of saints and portraits), which were taken literally, could not remain free of ambiguity” (p. 472).


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expectations of the innocence of the Madonna. Christopher Wood elaborates on the issue of convincingly rendered fictions in Renaissance painting in his

perceptive interpretation of Dosso Dossi’s “Enchantress” of 1529, Borghese Gallery, Rome (Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dosso_Dossi#mediaviewer/File:DossoDossi.jpg). The “Enchantress” shows a woman seated in a landscape in a composition reminiscent of such canonical Madonna images as Raphael’s “Madonna of the Meadows”, 1505, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dosso_Dossi#mediaviewer/File:DossoDossi.jpg). Like the Virgin in the “Madonna of the Meadows”, the enchantress is a single, centrally placed female figure dominating a dramatically receding landscape. But the enchantress is all the Virgin is not. An enchantress appropriating the posture and placement of the Virgin becomes an anti-Madonna, a sacred image inverted (Wood, 2006, p. 166). Rather than an angelic mother in the company of two toddlers, the “Enchantress” is accompanied by such disconcerting objects, including the shrunken bodies of what may be her victims in the upper left corner, and armor in the lower left corner, perhaps atrophy from one of her casualties.

The identity of this Enchantress is uncertain. She may be a version of Circe (see Yarnall, 1994), the goddess who transformed the companions of Odysseus into swine (Odyssey 10: 135-12: 156). She may also be a figure derived from Orlando Furioso of 1516, a poem by Ludovico Ariosto, court poet in Ferrara. In the poem, an evil sorceress puts a spell on men, and a good sorceress reverses the spell. What is most curious about the Enchantress is her impassive expression and the ambiguity of status, neither clear. Even if we do not accept that she is based on Ariosto’s poem, the viewer cannot know if she is doing evil or good. Are the shrunken figures hanging from the tree about to be rescued? Or are they recent victims of sorcery? The picture offers no clue (Wood, 2006; Bulfinch, 2004 PDF; Zika, 2002).

A circle forms a boundary on the ground surrounding her. This functional boundary proposes two distinct worlds, one inside and another outside the circle. For Wood, this frame postulates a “real” world outside the fictitious world within a circle (Wood, 2006, p. 166). The circle also mimics the magic circle in Hans Schäufelein’s 1511 woodcut, a picture that that catalogs the manifestations of witchcraft.

Other elements of “The Sorceress” are not what they seem. The captured souls put their hands together as though in prayer (Wood, 2006, p. 166), but these bewitched male figures pray to a figure with unholy supernatural power, in a parody of Christian devotion to the Virgin.

The Dossi image, like the Baldung’s “Madonna with Parrots”, confuses expectations and renders familiarity strange by playing on the same dichotomy of witch and Virgin. The viewer of Baldung’s painting must wonder who this woman is, and this anxiety of not knowing is the heart of the meaning of the picture.

Strasbourg and the Reformation The city of Strasbourg where Baldung spent most of his career became Lutheran in the course of the early

1520s.18 The Reformation was still a new movement in 1533 when the “Madonna with Parrots” was painted. In a Protestant context, the Virgin remained an important figure, though her duties and status were different than they had traditionally been. As scholarship has shown, Luther himself continued to honor the Virgin, but with important provisos. For Luther, the Virgin deserved admiration because of her humility and acceptance of grace (Graef, 1963, p. 8), the defining experience of his theology. The Virgin’s extraordinary acceptance of 18 On December 1, 1523, only Evangelical preaching was permitted. In 1524, the Mass was held in German and the Eucharist was given in both kinds. Clerics could marry and monasteries were closing. Weber am Bach (2006, p. 54).


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grace renders her worthy of admiration, but, most importantly, she is definitely and absolutely not an object of devotion (Tappolet, 1962, pp. 58-77). For Luther, the Virgin was always and simply a human woman, nothing more.

Artists coped with religious change by adapting their subject matter to suit Lutherans or Catholics, or they produced images that were flexible enough to accommodate a range of viewers. This was clearly the case with the flagship artist of the Lutheran Reformation, Lucas Cranach the Elder.19 The hallmark of Cranach’s Madonna images is their flexibility, their ability to suit viewers with a range of religious sympathies.20 Cranach adjusted his range of subjects to exclude certain types of Mariological images that have no basis in scripture. Luther disapproved of such subjects vehemently (Wittmann, 1998).21

The categories of Lutheran and Catholic were fluid in the mid-sixteenth century, so it is not surprising that pictures accommodated the expectations of viewers with various, inchoate, and shifting beliefs.22 Like Cranach, Baldung continued to paint Madonna pictures in this Protestant city (Weber am Bach, 2006, pp. 20-31), although it is possible that he could have been painting for Catholic patrons as well.

The most comprehensive study of Baldung’s Madonna panels by Weber am Bach, cited above postulates a surprisingly narrow function for the “Madonna with Parrots”. Specifically, she contends that the picture relates explicitly to the Synod of 1533, which declared opposition to those who doubted the dual nature of Christ. Legislation against these skeptics that came out in 1533, the same year the “Madonna with Parrots” was painted. For Weber am Bach, the “Madonna with Parrots” defends the dual nature of Christ by showing his human need to nurse (Weber am Bach, 2006, pp. 115-118).

The author would respectfully take issue with Weber am Bach’s interpretation. Such a narrow, doctrinal function of the picture is implausible for myriad reasons. First, her argument falls back on an iconographic trap of making a text primary and reducing the picture to a mere conduit of a theological point. This approach buries the power of images and their own, meaning-generating discourse, as scholars such as Craig Harbison and James Marrow among others have demonstrated resoundingly (Harbison, 1985). Simply because a text and a picture emerge in the same year and city does not mean that they correlate directly. Even in a small 16th-century city with limited production of texts and pictures relative to contemporary output, not every word and image relates to every other. Second, Weber am Bach’s argument overlooks the differences between public and private display. The dimensions of the picture, plus the tradition of private viewing of Madonna pictures

19 On Luther’s theology, see his famous treatises, which map out the fundamentals of his theology. They include The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which attacked the Catholic sacraments, especially the mass (Luther, 1955-1986, pp. 11-57); The Freedom of a Christian, which explains and defines Christian faith (Luther, 1955-1986, pp. 333-377); and To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, which calls upon the German rulers to reform the church (Luther, 1955-1986, pp. 115-217).The ideas sola gratia (grace alone) sola fides (faith alone) and sola scriptura (scripture alone) epitomize Lutheran theology, as in the famous slogan “Justification by faith through grace”. Luther’s theological universe rested upon this idea. See Lohse (1986, pp. 149-150) and Dillenberger (1961, p. xiii). 20.Wittmann (1998) explores the shifting valences of iconographic meaning in different theological contexts (p. 180). Christiane Andersson (1981) explains that the persistence of familiar, traditional forms may obscure shifting functions (pp. 43-79). See also Marrow (1986, pp. 150-69), on the importance of pictorial function. Goedde (1989) explains how observing systematically repeated and omitted motifs assists interpretation, especially in the absence of textual evidence. 21 On Luther’s strident objections to the Virgin as intercessor, see Tappolet (1962, pp. 150-152); Luther (1955-1986, p. 257, 276); See also Düffel (1968, p. 238); and Oberman (1994, p. 242). 22 Wittmann (1998) explains that Madonna pictures could satisfy the expectations of both Evangelical and Catholic viewers (p. 180). Scholars have noted the intended multiplicity of meaning in Northern works of art. Cranach’s paintings are intended to suggest or invoke a spectrum of meanings, possessing, as they do, what Falkenburg calls “semantic openness”. See Falkenburg (1999, p. 356). See also Harbison (1994, pp. 70-81).


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argue against the idea that this small painting would declare an official theological precept. Third, the objective of doctrinally driven Lutheran art is to explicate theology as explicitly as possible (Christensen, 1979).23 (The intention is reciprocity of word and image, although the effect is of course less predictable24). As we saw above, the Madonna has a changed status in the Reformation. Because she has herself become ambiguous, a Madonna picture is the least practical way to define and clarify theology; her peculiar mood of the picture would only create more confusion. Fourth and most importantly, connecting the painting to the Synod does nothing to address the strangeness that distinguishes the picture. Yes, the painting asserts Christ’s humanity by depicting him nursing, but so do countless other representations of the nursing Virgin. It should be noted that an actual nursing baby does not position his mouth on the breast as Christ does in Baldung’s picture. No human baby could draw nourishment in such an unnatural position. As Weber am Bach says herself, Luther admonished against depicting the Virgin with the breast, and the panel resembles the very Catholic of Milchwunder(miracle of milk) of Bernard of Clairvaux (Weber am Bach, 2006, p. 116). None of this clinches a Catholic or Lutheran identity for the picture, but it does underscore the tremendous ambiguity of the image, an aspect that argues against such a narrowly confessional interpretation.

As we learn from Margaret Carroll in the epigraph, art does not by definition or even necessarily offer “unequivocal judgments”. Works of art flow through verbal, textual, and pictorial discourses, changing shape with each new response and contribution (Davis, 2009). The “Madonna with Parrots” participates in multiple discourses related to, but not theologically bound to Reformation.

Rather, what the “Madonna with Parrots” is really about is the messy process of the demotion of the Virgin from holy figure to mortal woman, a process initiated in Luther’s theology, perpetuated in Cranach’s paintings, and furthered in the desacralization of the Virgin in Baldung’s picture. Like Cranach, Baldung painted images of the Virgin that could accommodate a range of viewers; Unlike Cranach, shaping confessional issues was not Baldung’s priority.

The First Parents and the Mother of God Renowned for his meticulously proportional figures, Baldung’s older contemporary Albrecht Dürer built

his reputation on creating ideals of unassailable human beauty, perhaps most famously in his engraving of Adam and Eveof 1504 (see Figure 2) where the figures display Vitruvian proportions, with postures and gestures that mimic the Apollo Belvedere (c. 330-320 BCE, Vatican Museums) and the Medici Venus (2nd century BCE, Uffizi, Florence). Joseph Koerner has shown that Baldung inverted the perfected human bodies of his older contemporary’s by transforming them what amounts to their evil twin.25 For instance, Baldung’s drawing Death Holding a Banner, c. 1506 Kupferstichkabinett, Kunst museum, Basel mirrors and subverts Adam from Dürer’s 1504 engraving by reconstituting the idealized Adam as a rotting cadaver posing in a mirror image. This subversion of Dürer’s example allowed Baldungto assert his artistic independence as a macabre reinvention of Dürer. Just as Baldung inverted Adam, he adapted and reinvented the Virgin, also as a way to separate himself from his more famous contemporary (Hults, 2005, 78). The disorienting qualities of the “Madonna with Parrots” come from her gestures, expression, eye contact, and bared shoulder, all of which

23 On Law and Gospel, see pp. 124-130; on Cranach’s Reformation altarpieces, see pp. 136-154. 24 On the intended clarity but actual disconnect between word and image in religious art of the Renaissance, see Berdini (1997) and Noble (2009). 25 Koerner (1993) calls his chapter “Dürer Disfigured” Moment (pp. 249-273).


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subvert her purity, so much so that the traditional Eve-Mary dichotomy topples. In the “Madonna with Parrots” the relationship actually becomes sisterly. Baldung flaunts the rules of representation of the Madonna by connecting her formally to Eve.

In Baldung’s chiaroscuro woodcut of 1511 (see Figure 3), both Adam and Eve gaze at the viewer, while they enact the Fall, turning towards the beholder to expose the full spectacle of their nudity. Adam positions himself behind Eve, placing her between himself and the viewer as though to display what tempted him. The eye contact between the figures and the beholder beckons and tempts the viewer, encouraging him (Baldung’s patrons were male) to participate in the seduction, or derive voyeuristic pleasure from the scene, or perhaps to summon his strength to learn from Adam’s mistake and resist. Playing on this most ancient seduction, the “Madonna with Parrots” locks eyes with the viewer, her hand on her breast in a gesture paralleling Adam’s hand caressing Eve. Just like Eve, her narrow-eyed expression and exposed flesh encourage carnal thoughts. Similar parallels exist between the “Madonna with Parrots” and Baldung’s much later painting of “Adam and Eve” of 1530-1540 (MuseoThyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, not illustrated) where Eve regards the viewer with inclined head and a direct gaze, and a touch draws the beholder’s eye to the breast.

Figure 3. Adam and Eva (chiaroscuro woodcut). Sheet: 37.7 x 25.7 cm (14 13/16 x 10 1/8 in). Source: Hans Baldung

Grien, 1511, National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection.

The “Madonna with Parrots” not only resembles pictures of Eve, it also differs from earlier versions of “Maria Lactans”, Mary nursing. The exposure of so much of the Virgin’s flesh is atypical in images of the Madonna, and certainly more than would be necessary to actually nurse a child. The sultry exposure of flesh along with her angled head and the gaze and nibbling parrot are suited to seduction rather than nursing. The unusual inclusion of two parrots suggests that one may contradict the other, that one may be the Eva and the other the Ave, insisting that the winner of the battle between dangerous and pure women has yet to be resolved (Weber am Bach, 2006, p. 131).

Eye contact itself is not unusual in Madonna pictures, but eye contact combined with the exposed breast


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and exposed shoulder is unfamiliar indeed. This combination of exposed flesh and eye contact also appears in Baldung’s later, Madonna panels, for example, “Madonna with Sleeping Christ” (c. 1540), Gemäldegalerie der StaatlichenMuseenzu Berlin (not illustrated), where the shoulder is uncovered and the breasts are exposed even as the child sleeps rather than nurses. The persistence of these combinations of elements suggests a tendency in Baldung’s Madonna pictures to tamper with the Virgin’s purity.

If we compare the “Madonna with Parrots” to Robert Campin’s “Virgin by a Fire screen” of 1420 National Gallery, London, we see in Campin’s image that the Virgin’s eyes are humbly averted26 and only her breast and a bit of chest are visible. In Rogier van der Weyden’s “Saint Luke Painting the Virgin” of 1440, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Virgin’s eyes are decorously downcast and only the breast is exposed with no superfluous flesh. A brief look at three of Dürer’s Madonna pictures, the “Madonna Nursing”, 1503 and the “Madonna with a Half Pear”, 1512, both in the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna the 1526 “Madonna with a Pear” (Uffizi) show none of the sensuality of Baldung’s “Madonna with Parrots”. The female figures cast their eyes down or at Christ, or nurse discretely.

Baldung’s departures from traditional Marian imagery, and the parallels with depictions of Eve, ultimately undermine the Virgin’s holiness. In Baldung’s image, the Virgin has become, to quote the title of Bridget Heal’s dissertation “a woman like any other” (Heal, 2001) human and sexual,27 and in Baldung’s world, capable of evil. Luther himself insisted that the Virgin is not qualitatively different than anyone else (Tappolet, 1962, p. 58).

Sexuality, along with mortality, defines the humanity of Christ. Steinberg famously contends that Renaissance painting emphasized Christ’s sexuality as a way of asserting his humanity. By the Renaissance, Christ’s divinity was no longer disputed, but his humanity needed to be reiterated. Displaying the infant Christ’s genitals was one way of making the point (Steinberg, 1997, pp. 15-24). A similar insistence on the Virgin’s sexuality is at issue in Baldung’s picture. If, as Luther himself contends, the Virgin is human, then she also must be sexual. The “Madonna with Parrots” is a human woman, and in Baldung’s universe as sexual and dangerous as any other.28 The “Madonna with Parrots” awakens the male beholder’s desires and reminds him of his fallen state, just as an image of Eve might.

To be sure, medieval theologians, most famously Bernard of Clairvaux, fell in love with a pure Virgin Mary, a rose without thorns.29 But the sensuality of Baldung’s picture is different, not spiritual love expressed in erotic metaphor, but profanation manifested in sensuality. Baldung’s patrons do not fall in love, but rather fight seduction by a human Virgin whose danger rivals Eve.

The effect the Virgin’s sexuality may be to reinforce the viewer’s own fallen state.30 But there are other possibilities. The pleasure of the sexual performance and the recollection of the sin of the first parents create a conflict of expectation and visual experience. This tension, rather than a specific point of doctrine, is precisely the issue in the “Madonna with Parrots”. If the “Madonna with Parrots” is flirting with the beholder, what is the beholder to conclude? Hults (2005) rightly contends that when Baldung’s male viewers confronted an image of

26 On the role of images as models for actual female behavior, and eye contact specifically, see Bleyerveld (2001, pp. 219-250). 27 On sexuality, mortality, and humanity, see Steinberg (1997). 28 As Schade (1987), explains, any nude woman is a potential witch. Baldung’s Virgin appears in a state of undress unnecessary for the practical purpose of nursing, which makes her a potential witch as well (as cited in Hults, 2005, p. 71). See also Schade (1983). 29 See the sermons by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs, in Bernard and Walsch, 1981. 30 Koerner makes this idea in reference to Baldung (1993, pp. 268-273; 356-357).


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feminine wiles, the viewer is offered a sense of superiority because he will not allow himself to be fooled.31 He knows not to trust any of the confusing visual cues that duped poor Adam.

Doubting the Virgin’s holiness, wondering if what appears to be the Virgin may not be the Virgin after, all are poignantly brought to light in Luther’s reaction to the famous event of the Fair Mary of Regensburg. In 1519, the City Council of Regensburg razed the local synagogue and expelled the Jews from the city. As the synagogue was being dismantled, a stonemason fell from the scaffolding but then recovered “miraculously” from his injuries. This miracle was attributed to an image in the city known as the Fair Mary icon, and a new church was to be built in her honor on the site of the former synagogue (Bartrum, 1995; Freedberg, 1989; Baxandall, 1980; Mielke, 1988). Luther famously worried that the miracles of the famous Fair Mary of Regensburg were actually deceptions originating with the devil. He cautioned that Satan could just as easily have caused the wounded man’s inexplicable recovery (Düffel, 1968, p. 237).32 It would appear that Martin Luther and Chico Marx, quoted in the epigraph, are in agreement; both question the truth of visual experience.

The “Madonna with Parrots” does not redeem Eve; on the contrary, it profanes the Virgin. Formal features such as her eye contact with the beholder, her bare flesh, and the unseemly intimacy with the Gray Parrot, make any pretense of holiness appear ironic. The idea of the compromised Virgin becomes more powerful in the context of the demoted status of the Virgin in the Reformation, of her associations with Eve, and as we will see, in Baldung’s representations of witches and Venus.

Virgins and Witches Baldung’s celebrated and infamous pictures of witches perpetuate a misogyny that would ultimately fuel

later witch hunting. The prosecution of witches reached a crescendo in a “golden age” of witch hunting as it was, between 1560 and 1630.33 A variation of the misogyny that permeates witch imagery also informs the “Madonna with Parrots”.

Images of witches and texts about witchcraft proliferated at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, about two generations before witch hunting gained momentum around 1560.34 Dürer’s Four Witches engraving of 1497, his first dated engraving, is the first example of a picture of a witch as an independent work

31 Hults (2005) sees the viewer as privileged, rather than denigrated (pp. 65, 67, 96), and discussion below. 32 Luther wrote, “After the Jews were expelled, the devil put himself in their place, and made false signs through the highly praised name of Mary and deceived you as well as many others” (the author’s translation of “Der teuffel, nach dem die Juden vertrieben sind, sich selbs an yhre statt, gesezt und duch den hochgelobten namen Maria falsche zeychen thutt und euch sampt vielen anderen betrugt”). See the section dedicated to Luther’s letters in WA,WABr, vol. 3, pp. 141-42. 33 Wolfgang Behringer (2008) correlates the timing of witch hunting with weather conditions in his article “Weather, Hunger, and Fear”, in Oldridge’s Reader, pp. 74-85). Behrenger (2008) writes “Never before or since have so many people been legally executed in such a grotesque manner as in the years 1560-1630” (p. 81). He calls the period that marked fanatic witch hunting 1560-1630 “Little Ice Age” (p. 75). According to Zika’s (2007) Appearance, Witch trials were uncommon in Strasbourg until 1570 (p. 13). Wood (2006) suggests that witch hunting began in earnest in 1480’s. Sullivan (2000) notes the difference between the timing of Baldung’s witch images and the momentum of actual witch hunts, and concluded that the images were not actually witches at all. According to Hults (2005), approximately 20,000-25,000 witches were executed in Germany between 1560-1660, though “Germany” is a vague term. According to Koerner (1993), 80% of the 100,000 witches executed in Europe between 1400-1700 were women. Strasbourg was relatively tolerant; very few witch trials occurred until the seventeenth century. 34 Hults (2005) implicitly correlates the emergence of witch hunting with the international publication of multiple editions of the witch-hunting manual the Malleus Maleficarum or the Hammer of Witches, between 1487-1520 (p. 66). Witchcraft was a specific crime, involving a pact made with the devil sealed with sex. After the deal was closed witches were believed to meet in groups, renounce God, and practice ritual cannibalism. Zika (2007) explains that witchcraft evolves out of sorcery, but has significant differences. Sorcery is an individual crime, where as witchcraft usually happens in groups. Sorcery aims to achieve what cannot be accomplished otherwise. Evil is the sole motivation for witchcraft (p. 26). An early example of an illustrated text on witchcraft is by Ulrich (Molitor, On Female Witches and Seers, 1490-1510; see Zika, 2007, p. 13).


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of art (Wood, 2006, p. 156). The most notorious text associated with the witch hunts is the Malleus Maleficarum of 1487 by Heinrich

Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. The Malleus included a Bull from Pope Innocent VIII as well as a letter of support from Emperor Maximilian. The Bull declares that people had been tempted into witchcraft in the cities of Trier, Cologne, Mainz, Salzburg, Bremen. Those who do not cooperate with inquisitors would be punished or excommunicated. The Malleus became more influential after 1560, when witch hunting was already underway (Hults, 2005, p. 60).35

Estimates about the numbers of people who were prosecuted or executed vary widely. One estimate is that 100,000-200,000 people were tried for witchcraft, 75% of them women, and approximately 10,000 were killed.36 Hults estimates that 20,000-25,000 executions of witches occurred in German territories from 1560-1660 (Hults, 2005, p. 57).

Ideas that nurtured fear of witches gestated in broader, inchoate anxieties before actual witch hunts occurred. The delay between the flourishing of pictures of witches and the onset of significant numbers of witch hunts that are between Baldung’s print of 1497 and Baldung’s successful witch-image production and the surge of witch trials starting c. 1560 suggests a period of incubation of ideas, words and images. This forces us to recognize that pictures such as Baldung’s depict stories, extrapolations, and fears, rather than embodying actual practices. The delay also reveals the complexity and interconnectivity of various iterations of related ideas in a range of discourses both pictorial and verbal. As we learn from Margaret Carroll in the epigraph, works of art pose problems, refract dilemmas, and express concerns; their function is indexical rather than conceptually mimetic.

The completion of Baldung’s chiaroscuro or tonal woodcut of “Witches Sabbath”, of 1510 (see Figure 4) correlates with the artist’s establishment as an independent master in Strasbourg (Hults, 2005, p. 77). Baldung’s witches are women who have reverted to furious depravity. Symmetry, beauty, and idealized proportion are overturned, becoming imbalance, ugliness, disproportion, and the most vulgar public display. As Charles Zika astutely explains, stereotypes of female nurturing are explicitly inverted. Rather than preparing nourishing food, they boil up noxious brews to poison and kill, the repulsive ingredients themselves derived from the blood of babies according to lore (Zika, 2007, p. 74).37

Zika (2007) proposes that misogynist witch imagery was motivated by fascination with female nurturing and sexuality; that the wild flying hair connects the figures to torches, referencing a gaseous internal environment, i.e. that women’s bodies boil like cauldrons and are capable of both nurturing and destruction. Like other scholars, Hults (2005) sees scape goating for misfortunes involving weather, illness, and famine.38 The poor and the ill took revenge on witches, and authorities complied perhaps to keep the peace (Behringer, 2008, p. 75). Witchcraft originated as a medieval heresy (Behringer, 2008, pp. 19-22).

35 Hults is the scholar who discusses the Malleus in explicit connection to Baldung. See also Koerner (1993). 36 Statistics cited in note 7, “Great Witch Hunt” in Brady, Handbook of European History, 1996. 37 Zika explains that riding is gendered male; kings, nobility, popes, bishops, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride. For women, riding is associated with the Whore of Babylon, the epitome of female evil, who wreaks havoc by claiming a male activity. 38 See also Behringer (2008).


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Figure 4. Witches Sabbath (tonal woodcut). Source: Hans Baldung Grien, 1510, Germanisches National museum, Nürnberg.

Both Baldung and Dürer made pictures of witches, though Baldung’s are more violent and numerous. The artists were not necessarily personally interested in witches, but their art indicates that they saw the utility of depicting them (Hults, 2005, p. 74). Baldung’s witch pictures include paintings, prints, and delicate, meticulous drawings of lewd and pornographic scenes.39 Baldung returned to witch imagery throughout his career, and suggesting he had a receptive audience. The scale and delicacy of the media and skill of execution suggest that Baldung’s witch images were costly and meant for occasional viewing in private or in small groups (Koerner, 1993, 344-351). Viewing such images was good for, in Hults’ words, “male bonding” among his elite audience of viewers (Hults, 2005, pp. 61-62, 93).40 Baldung’s pictures gave viewers a chance to feel both entertained and superior.

The problem of witchcraft returns us to the idea of perception and the reliability of visual experience. The problem with witches is at least in part a problem of epistemology. Witches existed hidden in plain sight. They were visible only in images and at executions (Wood, 2006, p. 153). How do we then know they exist if only the results of their alleged witchcraft are visible? One may see the effects of witchcraft, e.g. sickness, impotence, draught, hail, still-born children,41 but one never saw the practice of witchcraft itself. Witchcraft works like magic. The scarf goes into the hat and the rabbit comes out, but no one actually sees the scarf transform into the rabbit; similarly draught and famine are visible, but the spell that ostensibly caused them is not. Witch trials hinged upon the possibility that demonic seduction and participation in Sabbaths occurred entirely in the mind of the witch (Rowlands, 2008, p. 149). This explains why witches could be convicted even if the accused was asleep in her bed at the time of the supposed Sabbath, because the Sabbath was a mental 39 His 1510 Witches Sabbath was influential enough to be copied by other artists, for instance Urs Graf. 40 Hults (2005) writes “Put bluntly, Dürer’sFour Witches expresses men’s need to control female sexuality” (p. 65). On witch imagery in the 17th century, see Swan (2005). 41 On Witches and Seers and the Book of Virtues 1486.


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distortion caused by the devil. Despite the accident of the physical location of the accused witch, the evil of her delusion sufficed for conviction.

Thus the Strasbourg preacher Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg in his 1509 series of Lenten sermons explains:42

Now you ask me, what do you say, preacher, about these women who travel through the night and meet at assemblies? ...

…I say that they do travel hither and yon, but that they also remain where they are, because they dream that they travel, since the devil can create an impression in the human mind, and thus a fantasy…. And let us not be amazed that he can deceive them so completely… (Kors & Peters, 2001, p. 237)

Luther’s responses to the events at Regensburg depend on the idea that experiences deceives. Just as what seems to be miracles may in fact be satanic deception, witchcraft accusations are grounded in a likelihood of misapprehension. Misogyny and the unreliability of sensory perception combine to imply a skeptical viewing habit among male viewers of female subjects. The author’s point is that this propensity to doubt could lead to questioning nothing less than the virginity of the Virgin, especially with Baldung’s deliberate confusion of visual cues.

Wood postulates just this skepticism by linking Madonna pictures to Dossi’s “Sorceress”, which he understands as an image of a witch inscribed on the model of a Madonna in a landscape, as we saw above. By placing a witch in the pose and setting of the Virgin, Dossi’s picture threatens to prove that the Virgin herself may have possessed dangerous beauty.43 The “Madonna with Parrots” hovers close enough to convention that the viewer knows who she is supposed to be; yet the details undermine all expectations. Just as the Virgin may not be what she seems, so the woman in the world who appears unremarkable may turn out to be a witch. The mood of the “Madonna with Parrots” is something akin to Berthold Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt or estrangement effect (Brecht & Jeske, 1999), where the audience is left to reconcile itself to what is presented.

Baldung’s images of Eve, witches and the “Madonna with Parrots” interconnect thematically. Small witch drawings used scatological and sexual subjects to solidify the identity of a male audience, creating “a world for them to master” (Hults, 2005, p. 91). Witch and Eve imagery create an arena to neutralize anxieties about the crushing power of the male libido through cartoonish depictions of female wickedness. The “Madonna with Parrots” embodies purity tainted with eroticism. The unreliability of parrots’ speech adds to the picture’s other eccentricities by alluding to the idea of words deprived of familiar meaning, like the familiar meaning lost in the Virgin herself.

Originality Christopher Wood’s insightful ideas about originality, identity, and understanding of historical time in the

Renaissance help explain the Virgin’s lost holiness (Wood, 2008).44 It is of course a truism, even a cliché, that artistic identity is born of the Italian Renaissance, either through a process of self discovery (Burckhardt, Middlemore, & Goldscheider, n.d.) or self production (Greenblatt, 1980). Building on the secularization

42 The sermons were later published under title die Emeis(The Ants) Zika (2007, p. 13). 43 “The pagan thematics of the beautiful but deceptive surface were already negatively inscribed into the personage of the Virgin Mary, for Mary was the one woman whose beauty did not deceive. The picture works backwards and discloses the pagan and magical dimensions of the Christian figure” (Wood, 2006, p. 167). 44 His argument hinges on a distinction between notions of history and truth before and after the advent of mechanically reproducible media.


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paradigms developed by Jakob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, and Hans Belting, among others,45 Wood proposes a concept of artistic identity based on a distinction between works of art and literature that are “merely” authored, i.e. original creations of a single imagination and a particular moment in the timeline of history, compared to images and objects that draw power and truth from explicit continuity with oral and written traditions.46 This is not a move from sacred to secular so much as a shift from one kind of visual knowledge to another. Works of art and literature that perpetuate a tradition with no assertive authorial presence, such as a signature, a date, a recognizable personal style or an intentional deviation from conventional style or content, evolve out of an ongoing, uncreated past. Such images and objects link “have-always-been” to “will-always-be”, each functioning as a fungible replacement for a preceding object. A later copy of an earlier image is, for all epistemological, devotional, and historical purposes, precisely that earlier image itself, despite the accidents of the time of its literal manufacture. The rupture in an ongoing connection with the past, the intrusion of a personality in an ongoing change in images is what others have called the birth of the artist or the emergence of the individual (Belting 1994; Burckhardt, n.d.; & Greenblatt, 1980).

The fulcrum of the shift from uncreated artifact to single work of art is the notion of the individual author who is the product of a fixed historical moment. The introduction of an identifiable artist, known either by style, signature, date, or deviation from tradition, forces the viewer to grapple with sad knowledge that earlier replicas were never actually equivalent to their antecedents. At best, the magic of the past has simply disappeared. At worst, no magic was ever present at all (Wood, 2006, pp. 151, 153).

Wood distinguishes between Artifact, i.e. an object whose primary function is devotional and tends to be consistent with the past versions of the subject, and Art, whose devotional function may coexist with, or disappear behind, expressions of artistic originality and identity. For the former the primary issue is consistency of form, which preserves the devotional power and recedes all the way back to a holy and powerful original. Consistency of form conserves function and holiness. The replica does not merely replace the original, it is the original. The incidental maker of the object at any given historical moment is merely a conduit in a more important chain of meaning, the substitutional chain.

The advent of mechanical reproducibility discredited the substitutional model. The seeming exactness of a published text or printed image revealed the inevitable imperfection of the earlier hand-made substitutions, obliging viewers to focus on what made the substitutions unique rather than what bound them to a common origin. No longer an Artifact that could substitute, the Art object was unique and irreplaceable.47 This notion of originality replacing sustained holiness unlocks the mystery of the “Madonna with Parrots”. The profanation we observe with Baldung depends on broken substitutional chain, such that the “truth” and “holiness” of repetition has been sacrificed to the profanity of originality. By this definition the “Madonna with Parrots” is “Art” because it showcases the creativity of the maker and the content as invention or fiction (Wood, 2006, p. 156).48

The “Madonna with Parrots” presents a case of representational agnosticism where anything is possible

45 See Woods’ (2006) rehearsal of this literature in Forgery (pp. 76-84). 46 Wood (2006) makes this argument based on his reading of “Orlando Furioso” by Ludovico Ariosto, court poet to Alfonso d’Este. Ariosto recognized that his own poem is “merely” authored, that it does not have the strength of the oral tradition that supports Romances (p. 151). 47 For a full explanation of these ideas, see Wood (2006) “Germany and Renaissance” and Belting (1994). For Wood’s critique of Belting and the secularization paradigm, see Wood (2006, pp. 76-79) 48 Witch images are German book illustrations or “collectible works of art”, see Barry, Hester, & Roberts, 1996.


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because the substitutional chain is broken, the sacred and un-created artifact exposed as a loss or a lie, and unfettered imagination is all that remains. The Madonna with Parrots exemplifies this dilemma. The picture “excavates” levels of “Marian myth” by reflecting backwards to reveals the man behind the curtain, as it were. She is the issue of imagination that dares to profane the formulaic representation of the Virgin. The figure then becomes a showcase for such newfangled notions as originality and artistic self-awareness that ruptures tradition.

This idea of invention expands the association between witch imagery the “Madonna with Parrots”, and Baldung’s celebrated witch imagery. Both are also inventions/fictions that showcase Baldung’s individuality and creativity, even though such imagery will ultimately justify real prosecutions of witches. These fictions still point to “truths” outside themselves—such as the belief that women are inferior to men. But there is no retinal “truth” in the pictures per se.49 Neither the witches nor the “Madonna with Parrots” recapitulates a holy original. The “Madonna with Parrots” is “self-differentiated” from cult images of the Virgin, and has become unreliable, even dangerous.50

Venus In addition to Eve and Witches, Venus imagery also factors in to the meaning of the “Madonna with

Parrots”.51 The Virgin and Venus are the beauty queens of their respective traditions. Both of them use eye contact, though generally for quite different purposes, to engage the viewer (Weber am Bach, 2006, p. 130). What the author shall contend in this section is that in the case of the “Madonna with Parrots”, the Virgin and Venus have another important similarity: neither retains her sacred status.

If we consider examples of Renaissance images of Venus, for instance Botticelli’s canonical Birth of Venus of c. 1480, Uffizi Museum, Florence or any number of Venus images from the Cranach workshop, what we see is a palimpsest, layers of meaning, much of it Christian, upon an imagined picture of a pagan goddess. Neither Botticelli nor Cranach tells us anything about the “real” Venus. The “Madonna with Parrots” tells us just as little about the “real” Virgin.

In her indispensible 2006 study of the Madonna images of Hans BalungGrien, Sibylle Weber-am-Bach has rightly observed formal parallels between “Madonna with Parrots” and depictions of Venus. The gesture of the hand across the chest in the “Madonna with Parrots” parallels the composition of such famous objects as the Medici Venus, 2nd century BCE, Uffizi, Florence, among almost countless other examples.52 For Weber am Bach, these parallel gestures between the Virgin and Venus assert the Virgin’s beauty as erudite flattery for cognoscenti, that is, educated Humanists who will recognize the parallels with Venus and understand that the Virgin is as beautiful as the pagan goddess of love.53 Given these formal parallels and the Humanist context of Strasbourg, Weber am Bach concludes that the woman in the picture is not simply lovely as Venus, but she 49 As Wood (2006) writes in an essay on DossoDossi, “The witch emerged as a subject in European art in the late fifteenth century, at the very moment when the sacred image was beginning to lose its automatic centrality within the careers of artists and the imaginations of patrons” (p. 151). 50 In its threat to the artifact, the beautiful Maga is dangerous. Cult images “had offered the image of the Madonna, for example, as a reliable guide to her essence. The image of the maga also offered a beautiful surface, but signaled, through its self-differentiation from the cult image, that appearance itself was unreliable” (Wood, 2006, p. 164). 51 On the relationship between Venus and the Virgin, see Weber am Bach (2006, pp. 164-166). Weber am Bach understands Baldung’s comparison between the Virgin and Venus as a way to signify the artist’s Humanist and appeal. 52 On the Virgin and Venus, see (Weber am Bach, 2006, pp. 18, 122-124, 130). 53 Baldung uses the Venus and Madonna together implicitly to compare himself to Apelles; Baldung’s Virgin is the aesthetic counterpart to Apelles’ Venus. Weber am Bach (2006, p. 163).


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actually is Venus herself (Weber am Bach, 2006, p. 70), a fact that would explain the figure’s sensuality. As an alternative to Weber am Bach’s argument, I contend instead that the Virgin may be as lovely as

Venus, but she does not in fact dissolve into Venus. Formal parallels between subjects do not nullify the identities of each subject. For instance, the male and female figures in Dürer’s Adam and Eve engraving of 1504 echo the “Medici Venus” and the “Apollo Belvedere” 330-320 BCE, Vatican Museums without literally transforming the first parents into pagan figures. Similarly, the composition of the “Madonna with Parrots” obviously depicts the Virgin Mary, all the willful distortions notwithstanding.

The Virgin in 16th-century Strasbourg parallels Venus in 15th-century Florence. Both are artifacts that have lost living votive function and form part of a longing for an idealized past. The question of whether Baldung believed in the Virgin, or witches for that matter, is as immaterial as whether Botticelli worshipped Venus.

If Baldung’s picture informs the viewer that the Virgin’s beauty rivals that of Venus, the picture also tells the viewer that the Virgin and Venus are equally fictitious. Idea of Hults and van der Osten’s claim that the Virgin has become art make perfect sense. Formal parallels between Venus and the Virgin indicate that both have receded into mythical status.54

Luther’s notion of the Virgin as worthy but not holy suffices to support this idea, but the style of the “Madonna with Parrots” makes the point by departing from Marian tradition and appropriating qualities of a discredited pagan holy figure. Severed from the formal and functional connections that defined her doctrinal meaning, she is now, like Venus, a subject that the artist may manipulate to showcase his originality and identity (Weber am Bach, 2006). She is the Virgin consigned to the status of myth.

Conclusion The parrot, the bird associated with Eve and the Virgin, that Dürer drew and then reversed when it was

placed in the 1504 Adam and Eve engraving, is the perfect symbol of lost innocence. Parrots were “exotic” by 16th-century standards. Their speech was magical, their colors Edenic. Companion of both Eve and the Virgin, the parrot may signify the two women combined. The sensual neck biting in Baldung’s painting epitomizes the multiple valences of paradise and Virginity.

Baldung’s “Madonna with Parrots” offers the viewer a range of ideas and pleasures: color, beauty, pictorial familiarity and challenges to that familiarity, theological truisms and provocative violations of those truisms, eroticism, and a general warning to beware of all women, including the Virgin, whom Luther characterized as “like any other”. In short, the viewer is comforted, amused, provoked, admonished and entertained. The admonition to beware of women doubles as a congratulatory pat on the back for being one of the superior sex. Hults’ observation about Baldung’s witches applies here as well, that the female figure “ …confirmed everything that men aspired to by representing all that they struggled to reject” (Hults, 2005, p. 96).55

The Virgin’s, sexual presentation—within the framework of Lutheran demotion of her status, formal 54 Baldung synthesizing the Virgin with Venus is Neoplatonism in reverse—not reconciling pagan belief to dovetail with Christianity, but consigning Christianity to the status of antiquity, of art rather than artifact “Baldung’s 1510 woodcut, along with Dürer’s Witch, made it possible to visualize a deadly stereotype, regardless of whether artists themselves fully believed in it” (Hults, 2005, pp. 81-82). Or in Belting’s (1994) memorable formulation “If Venus and Cupid were shown on the kind of panel that had previously been the monopoly of saints, it could be justified only by granting art the same freedom as poetry to create fictions, beautiful illusions. An image of Venus that was not a work of art would have been outright nonsense” (p. 472). 55 Koerner (1993) proposes a scenario that is diametrically opposed, where the viewers of Baldung’s Adam and Eve painting in Lugano are not elevated, but denigrated in its presence (p. 298).


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parallels with Eve and Venus, the visual cues that render her purity dubious, and a fear of unreliable senses—makes for an uncomfortable realization. Like Adam and Eve who ate the fruit and realized they had been naked all along, the viewer of Baldung’s picture must recognize that the Virgin may never have been pure.

The parrot is a conundrum, a talking animal whose words cannot be trusted and a symbol whose conflicting valences complement the sensual Virgin in Baldung’s painting. As Mark Twain observes with characteristic succinctness: “She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot” (Twain, 2008, p. 29).

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Approaching an Abstract Cinematic Form: The Tree of Life by

Terrence Malick

Christos Dermentzopoulos

Ioannina University, Ioannina, Greece

Thanassis Vassiliou

Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France

One of the most important tools in film analysis is “segmentation”, as defined by the major film theorist Christian

Metz, with the help of the “great syntagmatic” (Grande Syntagmatique); an array, which will guarantee the

classification of any kind of shot in any kind of film and its consequent decoding. The division into sections

allowed a clinical approach of high validity, highlighting the hidden rhymes, the power of repetition, the underlying

pulses of the film, “decoding”, in a way, their soul; in essence their meaning. However, by the mid-1970s, the

semiotics of cinema was considered outdated and unrealistic, mainly because it failed to solve a problem to which it

was believed that it held the key to guarantee the “translation” of any abstract cinematic form. In this text, we

attempt to explore what semiotics can do today and how far “segmentation” can take us in the face of a particularly

“opaque” film, which is made of fragments of impressions, disparate elements and contrasts, such as The Tree of

Life (2011) by Terrence Malick.

Keywords: Metz, segmentation, Grand Syntagmatique, narration, editing

Introduction The connection between cinema and narrative was established, somewhat unexpectedly, at the beginning

of cinematic history by juxtaposing a technique of representation with the art of narration. However, it was not

long before “this constituted a social event, an event of civilization”, as Christian Metz (2003) admits.

The first creators of the “cinematic language” (a deeply problematic term that we will barely touch upon

here) such as G. Melies, E. Porter, G. A. Smith, or D. W. Griffith, were mainly interested in the potential of

films as a narrative medium. It is their interest in solving certain narrative issues that finally led them to invent

a considerably large number of structural cinematic principles, which would in turn establish the various

cinematic systems that we refer to as styles.

Semiology and Semiotics It was inevitable that the prevalence of semiology in France from the mid-60s and for about a decade,

based on the ideas of structuralism which preceded it, would also define cinematic analysis and theory by

offering a new approach to films. The cinematic narrative structures which were invented by the great directors

of the early years and developed by their successors, such as Sergei Eisenstein, Abel Gance, Fritz Lang,

Howard Hawks, Dziga Vertov, and others, began to be “categorized”, “classified” and, in the end, “translated”

Christos Dermentzopoulos, associate professor, Department of Fine Arts and Sciences of Art, Ioannina University. Thanassis Vassiliou, adjunct professor, Département of Cinéma, Aix-Marseille University.

DAVID PUBLISHING

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APPROACHING AN ABSTRACT CINEMATIC FORM

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through certain semiological “patterns” which guaranteed a more concrete, “tangible” analysis. Guy Gauthier

(1991) notes:

Deep inside, though not openly admitted, there was a common haunting among researchers and others. They felt that (through semiology) everything can be controlled. There was nothing, no book, no film, not even an opinion, which could not be deconstructed and processed by some computer program, which could in turn re-construct everything to its liking. (p. 106)

The way in which every director chooses to tell their story is for cinematic theory and criticism an

undoubtedly interesting prism through which films would be “deciphered” and all their secrets revealed. In

other words, with the contribution of semiology, film theory becomes akin to scientific analysis. Semiologists

believe that whereas viewers think they are entering the film through the signifier, semiologists know they are

entering through the signified. This belief clearly reflects the scientific concerns of the semiologists, who are

aware that equating cinema with language and the magic of the signifier could prove exceptionally unfortunate.

Every time an image would be bestowed the characteristics of a word, film theory would risk getting lost in a

maze of contradiction, as the relationship between the signifier and the signified has always been one of

convention, either through abstraction or intention. “If I tell you the word ‘table’, each of you will imagine a

different table, while if I show you a filmed table, you will all see the same table” (personal communication,

February, 3, 2004), Marguerite Duras famously said, eloquently demonstrating the difference in dynamics

between language and cinematic image. As Jean Mitry (1963) noted:

A film is, before and above all else, images, and indeed, images of things … These images, organized according to the chosen narrative in a system of signs and symbols, become symbols or can even become something more. They are not signs like words, but are, first and foremost, objects, a concrete reality. This is the only way in which we can say that cinema is a language. It becomes language on condition that, before all else, it is representation. It is a language in the second degree, if you will. (p. 56)

Christian Metz The juxtaposition between film theory and semiology, which is before and above all else realistic, specific,

and objective, produced through a clinical approach the most interesting cinematic analyses, many of which

even evolved into theories. The first to approach film theory with a modern scientific attitude was Christian

Metz. “He wasn’t looking for truth”, says Gauthier (1991), “he moved on. He only cared about what was

spoiled, corrupt” (p. 148).

This important thinker aimed at uncovering the “fundamental figures of communicating all information”

(Metz, 2003, p. 145), based on the notion that cinema might appear to be a language, but literary analysis ought

to approach it as a dialect. Metz adopted the tools of linguistics, starting rigorous research into segments and

attempting to discover the codes according to which these segments function. His scheme, which is called the

Grande Syntagmatique, constitutes an important theoretical “gadget” in film analysis and semiology’s approach

towards understanding films. Metz (2003) claimed that, with the Grande Syntagmatique, “what needs to be

understood is the fact that films can be understood” (p. 145).

Film analysis, which preexisted both semiology and structuralism, had always and will always use three

basic types of “tools”:

(1) Description. In a narrative film everything can be described (decoupage, segmentation, images etc.).

Hence, everything can be an item of study, by “highlighting” or “underlining” it through description. In other


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words, “there is no grammar in cinema, only rhetoric” (Mitry, 1987, p. 145).

(2) Subjective approach. Which of the elements originally identified by the analyst can be the objects of a

detailed study with a view to “translating” the film into a satisfying written version? Some examples include

structural highlighting, frame analysis, sound track analysis, cultural references, camera movement, direction

characterization etc..

(3) Archive materials. It involves the use of records, before and after the completion of the film, which

provide information about it, without necessarily being part of the film (interviews, texts, script changes, etc.).

Film semiology naturally contributed to the evolution of the first tool of film analysis, namely description.

By using the unquestionable fact that the shot is the minimal unit and the crux of the narrative, Metz applies to

cinema one of the fundamental principles of semiology, borrowing from Louis Hjelmslev (1963) the

accentuation of an important distinction: the one between units and system, which will eventually help us

discover the existence of a code. The discovery of a code for any information communicating system, and for

film in particular, is fundamental to the scientific approach proposed by film semiology. As noted by Jacques

Aumont, Alain Bergala, Michel Marie, and Marc Vernet (2004):

Codes are not truly formal models, as they often are in logic, but rather units aspiring to formalization. Their homogeneity is not of a sensorial or material nature but is instead on the order of the logic of coherence, possessing anexplanatory and enlightening potential. A code is understood in semiotics as a field of commutations. Within this field, the variations of the signifier correspond to variations of the signified and a certain number of units take their meaning only in relation to other member units. (p. 160)

This important antithesis between a cinematic unit, which is—originally—the shot, and a system, which

is—eventually— the film, decisively contributed to the creation of the Grande Syntagmatique.

Segmentation As early as 1961, the French magazine L’Avant-Scène Cinéma, had begun publishing the decoupage of

famous films, thus exhibiting a tendency towards a “structural translation”, by counting shots, shot durations,

sizes, image-sound relationships, types of continuity, etc.. As a result, we could have an initial assessment of a

film just by the number of shots it counted. With the average number of shots at 400 to 600 for a 90-minute

film, an informed viewer could immediately understand the “structural type” of Eisenstein’s October (1928),

which counted 3,225 shots, or Marguerite Duras’ India Song (1975), which counted 73.

Segmentation, which is the evolution of the theoretical concerns behind these calculations, was the major

point of interest for C. Metz. The modernism of the 1960s with its consecutive “new waves” in almost every

country with a respectable film industry, complicates narrative constants, and film structure is transformed for

the analyst who is accustomed to “academic” cinematic patterns, into a field wide open for interpretation. C.

Metz focuses his interest on the proposition of a concrete code which could apply to any cinematic unit, thus

defining their differences in a clear and convincing way. He continues the theoretical considerations of his

predecessors André Malraux, Béla Balazs, Edgar Morin, and Jean Mitry, whose views converged on the

importance of editing as the fundamental process around which cinema can be organized as discourse. With the

Grande Syntagmatique, Metz (2003) divides cinematic units, named “syntagms” into eight categories, which

can emerge as an “edited result” (pp. 121-145).

(1) The autonomous shot—a shot that constitutes a unit in itself (establishing shot or insert).

(2) The parallel syntagm. It consists of units which are juxtaposed through editing and do not have a


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temporal or spatial relation (synchronicity or proximity), but mainly a symbolic one (a montage of motifs, like

shots of rich people—shots of poor people, shots of calm—shots of tension, shots of the city—shots of the

countryside, etc.).

(3) The bracketing syntagm. It consists of units with no temporal relation which presents “representative

examples of the same reality”, for example, shots or scenes of life in a city which are not temporally related,

but give a clear impression of life in this particular city.

(4) The descriptive syntagm. It consists of descriptive shots which are temporally linked and relate to the

same space (for example, consecutive shots of a landscape) or action (consecutive shots of a shepherd’s walk:

shot of the shepherd—shot of the dog—shot of the herd, etc.).

(5) The alternating syntagm. It is also known as crosscutting and links two simultaneous actions which are

usually connected. It is one of the most classic action units, the most prominent example being the alternation

between the hunter and the hunted, who occupy the same space in close temporal proximity.

(6) The scene. A series of shots imply a temporal continuity. The signified is “fragmented” (into shots)

while the signifier (the presented event) is understood as unfolding without “glitches” (hence, the term

“continuity editing” in these instances).

(7) The episodic sequence. It consists of short shots which constitute abbreviated pieces of a larger

narrative unit.

(8) The ordinary sequence. This is a series of shots which compose a complicated temporal development,

discontinuous but homogeneous. Like in the scene, the signified is “fragmented”, but in this syntagm the

alternation of shots allows us to be taken to moments of action, whereas details of no apparent interest and dead

time are excised (Stam, 2006, pp. 155-156; Stam, Burgoyne, Flitterman-Lewis, 1992, pp. 40-48).

Semiotics Today Almost half a century later, structural film criticism continues to provide us with excellent analyses and

even theoretical propositions. For instance, the three types of editing (continuity, discourse, correspondence),

proposed by Vincent Amiel (2001), exemplify a categorization of editing which clearly draws its ideas from the

study of the Grande Syntagmatique. On the other hand, William Guynn (2001) acknowledges the use of Metz’s

table in his attempt to analyze a large number of documentaries from a semiological standpoint, with a view to

approaching cinematic discourse with reality through reality itself. Besides, one of the main criticisms of

Metz’s proposition was its bias towards the mainstream narrative film and the marginalization of other genres,

such as avant-garde and documentary (Stam, 2006, p. 158). However, when cinema abandons the action-image

or movement-image and turns its focus on the temporal identity of its images towards a cinema of time-image,

as Deleuze suggests, the Grande Syntagmatique appears incapable of suggesting anything truly

ground-breaking for film analysis. The modernism of neo-realism and, later, of “Nouvelle Vague” might have

driven Metz to the formulation of the Grande Syntagmatique, but editing quickly lost interest both in classical

narrative and the construction of a cinematic discourse. In other words, it stopped being dependent on an

“external” theoretical basis. Gradually, form and style became more important than content. Films allowed

editing to impose its rhythm “as is” and sensation to exceed representation.

In this way, editing is elevated from a tool of narration or discourse to an autonomous process, which

asserts itself simply because it exists, as a pulse, as a rift between durations. Time is no longer an important

feature of cinema. Time becomes the object of cinema. But can we discuss editing the way the term is widely


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used, as a “writing” tool, when it is not a construction fixed in advance? Can we discuss editing when there is

essentially no decoupage and several directors, like Robert Bresson, view the filming experience as the “art of

the encounter”? Can we discuss editing when randomness becomes a creative condition and intent plays no part

in this exploration?

In these cases of “modern” cinema, the script is discovered and revealed during editing. It no longer

defines a succession, a continuity, but it allows sensation to permeate the stitching of the shots, to take

residence in the gaps between them, communicating another dimension of “representation”. In films where

duration is offered as experience and the alternation of shots as pulse, identifying them is no longer important.

What is important is the discovery of the hidden connections formed among the various duration “blocks”.

The nature of rhythm changes. It does not depend on the ratio of shots to duration, it is no longer

measurable, becoming an “indeterminate constant” as a result of an “architecture of tension” (Amiel, 2001, p.

82). Tarkovsky’s famous phrase about the intensity of time running through the shots indicates the drastic

stylistic transformation of editing in particular, and of structural cinematic composition in general.

As cinema has constantly been searching for a meta-language since the 1960s, going from modernism to

post-modernism, to a sense of satiety and back to a “new modernism which should first and foremost be

postmodernism”, according to De Duve (1998), the rejuvenation of structural cinematic principles has always

been its main object of interest. From Godard to Angelopoulos, from Makavejev and Marker to Akerman,

Wiseman, and WANG Bing, from Carax, Van Sant or Bella Tarr to Haneke and JIA Zhang-ke, innovative,

ground-breaking cinema has always measured itself against different types of editing, which usually

disregarded “highlighting the action”. The classic distinction between a narrative and an experiential action

model remained strong, despite the subversion of boundaries and genres in the postmodern era.

The Case of Terrence Malick From this point of view, the cinema of Terrence Malick keeps distancing itself from all narrative concerns,

as from film to film and through time periods it proposes a rather opaque and unconventional idiom. His recent

film The Tree of Life (2011) (Palme d’ Or, Cannes Festival, 2011) is one of the most alluring examples of this

constant exploration.

Malick’s cinema, by completely abandoning the constants of classical narrative, explores a fascinating

balance between the narrated story and the use of non-narrative cinematic means. In other words, Malick’s

narrative, while arising from its negation, manages not only to survive, but also to radically rejuvenate itself.

Since everything in The Tree of Life relies on this discourse, it is one of the most characteristic examples of the

American creator’s exploration. Brad Pitt, the film’s protagonist and producer, speaks of a film “between

randomness and perfection”. Alexandre Desplat, the film’s composer, speaks of an unprecedented experience,

as he had never been asked to score a film without having seen edited material (even Miles Davis improvised

the score to Louie Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows while watching an edited copy). Mark Yoshikawa, head of

the team of five editors, speaks of Malick’s concern that the viewer should never feel “the director’s hand”, as

he calls it, “behind the images”, and Emannuel Lubezki, the film’s cinematographer, speaks of the instinctive,

but also predetermined nature of an unforgettable shoot (Benghin, 2011).

How can modern film analysis and theory approach such a film through the lens of the Grande

Syntagmatique? How helpful can structural highlighting and shot categorization be when applied to this

post-narrative language? If Metz aimed to isolate the basic syntagmatic forms of narrative cinema and define


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cinema as a narrative language in response to the notorious vagueness of cinematic terms (Stam, 2006, p. 154),

how can this perspective contribute to the analysis of Malick’s film?

In his review in Cahiers du Cinéma, Cyril Benghin (2011) writes:

The details of direction in The Tree of Life are intrinsic to the complexity created by its structure, which is spread over five, more or less, connected parts. What story does the film tell? The death of a son; years later, the melancholy of Jack, one of his brothers; the birth of the universe; the elliptical fragments of a Texan childhood around a strict father and a mother as beautiful as an icon; the unexpected encounter of the living and the dead on the shores of a mystical coast. (p. 13)

The French critic clearly associates the style of the direction with the nature of the structure which

supports the film. So do the director’s collaborators. Although structure is clear and indisputable, any attempt at

narrative segmentation is rendered null. Through most of the film, editing does not depend on the concept of

continuity, parallel, or counterpoint, since its raw materials are shots which are basically products of freedom,

serendipity and unpredictability. Lubezki (2011) notes:

In a film like this, you don’t have to focus on continuity… We moved through space according to what we were looking for: the forbidden, the joyous, the mysteries. It all depended on the feeling… which Malick gave us in the form of notes every morning before shooting began… it was like fishing: Each (of the camera operators) was trying to catch the best fish. (p.17)

It is quite obvious that the lack of decoupage makes it impossible for the editor to use the syntagmatic

types Metz suggested, even if he often wants to. Although Malick starts from the idea of five parts, he often

“pierces” them with shots from other parts, thus breaking the confines that would guarantee a robust structure.

The same happens from scene to scene and from shot to shot. Moments which are interrupted before they even

begin and shots which are not given enough time to communicate their information to the viewer alternate with

bizarre continuity cuts and drastic shifts in lenses and angles, at a pace sometimes lazy and other times frenzied,

creating a visual poem of light and physicality, which stubbornly refuses to chart a specific course according to

Metz’s Grande Syntagmatique. It is of absolutely no use to re-construct the film by naming certain filmic

lengths “scenes”, “alternating syntagms”, or “episodic sequences”. There is no point in highlighting the

boundaries among the parts. The editing of The Tree of Life negates any such attempt and emphasizes a story

whose protagonist is none other than the magic of physical movement, natural light and the freedom of the

performances.

Conclusion The Grande Syntagmatique appears irrelevant before this cinematic experience for another important

reason; it never had anything to offer on the relation between sound and image. The protagonists’ voice-overs,

which “embrace” the images and make them “theirs”, the music themes which enter and exit unexpectedly, the

magic of natural sounds, even silence, drastically change the visual result, adding another insurmountable

problem to the segmentation posited by the Grande Syntagmatique. The narrative units are not defined by their

“syntagmatic” character, but on the contrary, by the flowing force the editing bestows on them. In this way,

narrative units stop being “units”, but do not stop being “narrative”. However, let us refrain from misguided

parallels; this editing bears no relation to that of Eisenstein or Godard. It might bring to mind their expressive

confusion, but it is actually disinterested in both the visual excess of a cubistic representation and the

expressive tension of a fast pace. In The Tree of Life, the editing constantly selects and connects, it separates


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and juxtaposes, towards one goal; a sense of flow. It poses the question: If we deny continuity and linearity,

how can we communicate a sense of smooth, uninterrupted flow? As a result, the film questions narrative

constants with no intention to polemicize, like the experimental cinema, but with an unrestrained desire to

revitalize. In this case, it turns out that the Grande Syntagmatique has absolutely nothing to offer.

References Amiel, V. (2001). Esthétique du montage (Aesthetics of editing). Paris: Nathan. Aumont, J., Bergala, A., Marie, M., & Vernet, M. (2004). Aesthetics of film. Austin: University of Texas Press. Beghin C. (2011). A l’Origine (At the origin). Cahiers du Cinéma, 668, 12-14. De Duve, T. (1998). Kant after duchamp. An October book. Cambridge: MIT Press. Gauthier, G. (1991). Christian Metz à la trace and Jean Mitry: Un Géant (Christian Metz on the trail and Jean Mitry: A Giant).

CinémAction, 60. Green, S., Pohland, B., Pitt, B., Gardner, D., & Hill, G. (Producer), & Malick, T. (Director). (2011). The tree of life [Motion

Picture]. U.S.A.: Fox Entertainment. Guynn, W. (2001). Un Cinéma de Non-Fiction (A non-fiction cinema). Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provenc. Hjelmslev, L. (1963). Prolégomènes à une théorie du langage (Prolegomena to a theory of language). Paris: Minuit. Lubezki, E. (2011). Interview. Cahiers du Cinéma, 668, 16-17. Metz, C. (2003). Essais sur la signification au cinéma (Essays about significance on cinema). Paris: Klincksieck. Mitry, J. (1963). Esthétique et Psychologie du Cinéma, t1 (Aesthetics and psychology of cinema). Paris: Éditions Universitaires. Mitry, J. (1987). La sémiologie en question (Questioning semiology). Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf. Stam, R (2006). Eισαγωγή στη θεωρία του κινηματογράφου (Introduction in film theory). Αθήνα: Πατάκης . Stam, R., Burgoyne, R., & Flitterman-Lewis, S. (1992). New vocabularies in film semiotics. London and New York: Routledge.


An Analysis of Anton Von Webern’s Concerto for Nine

Instruments

Esra Karaol Istanbul University State Conservatory, Istanbul, Turkey

Anton Webern’s (1883-1945) largest project of the early the 1930s, the Concerto for Nine (solo) Instrument’s Op.

24, is for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, and piano. This serial work’s analysis became

almost as famous as the concerto itself. Highly economical, short, concentrated and free relationship between the

intervals take over from tonality as the main organizational principle “pontillistic” style. The clear and transparent

frame “Klangfarbenmelodie”, is a row, that was distributed among different instruments. So that, several notes can

be heard in the same timbre. Like most of Webern works, there are quiet special effects like a whisper, string

harmonics, pizzicato, muting, and athematic intevalic cells as the basic structural element. Concerto for Nine

Instruments has succeeding series of twelve-tone works. Webern worked for a long time on the Concerto’s raw,

trying to arrive at an equivalent to the Latin word-square palindrome which reads the same left to right from the top,

right to left from the bottom, downwards from the top left, or upwards from the bottom right.

S A T O R

A R E P O

T E N E T

O P E R A

R O T A S

Keywords: Webern, twelve-tone, serialism

Introduction Webern embraced the strictest kind of twelve-tone procedure and fully incorporated this into his own

esthetic (Salzman, 1988). Webern’s row is extremely economical. Every three-note segment of Webern’s concerto is a contrapuntal derivative (transposed) of the pitches G, B, and B-flat. Each three-note group is a retrograde, inversion, or retrograde inversion of each of the other trichords. The row is constructing certain transpositions yield trichords with the same pitch-class content. The work’s trichord-based row and a rhythmic figure to view it is an anticipation of total serialism. Its minimalist play of trichords might indicate a high level of abstraction and suggest the possibility of a parallel and equally programmatic reading. His principle “maximization of the minimalization” is limited collection of pitches, registers, colors, rhythms, accents, and articulations in its greatest possible variety. The basic intervallic units are mentioned as Major third and minor second. Certain group of pitches aspects the relationship with the twelve-tone pitch material and usage of retrograde and inversion techniques.

Esra Karaol, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Musicology, Istanbul University State Conservatory.

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Concerto Op. 24 was dedicated to Schoenberg on his 16th birthday. It exhibits the new probability in the instrumental music. The style of the work’s period is to use wide intervals, instrumental tone, and extraordinary usage of the registers. The technique Webern used in this piece is based on series relationships, planning systematic analysis of row forms.

Second Movement The slow second movement (2/4) of Webern’s Concerto Op. 24 was written in an obvious serial texture.

This movement forms a meditative (B) section between the first and third movements (A’s). For all its quietness and reserve this movement is one of the most extreme and single minded of Webern’s serial pieces. There is a pattern that recalls the falling and rising thirds with the opening parts of the second movement. The rhythmic structure is the same but the tempo has changeable difference. The main trichord (0 14) is dominating to all the measures one by one. Sometimes it comes vertically in one measure, sometimes it spreads more than one measure in a linear, or diagonal way of using. In a twelve-note row for the first four bars, it starts with P7 (as G, B, Bb). In the next four bars come I11 (as B, C, G#/A b) and the very next four bars introduces P3 using the notes Eb, G, and F#. For the first four bars, the combinations of R, I, and RI, based on the trichords, are also used vertically one by one. For example, the first D, D#, and F# trichord of the second are the RI6 of the first diagonal G, B and Bb and Bb trichord in the first two measures. The E, F, and C# notes in the second and third measures are R1 and C, Ab, and A in the fourth measure is I0. These are all derived trichords from each other and comprise the twelve-tone row in the first four bars. It consists of a three-note row followed by its RI, R, and I with each of these note-cells transposed at higher or lower pitch levels.

The row of the first movement: P0 > P: B-Bb-D RI: Eb-G-F# R: G#-E-F I: C-C#-A Second movement, Measures 1-4: R10 > G-B-Bb D#D-F# E-F-Db C-Ab-A Measures 4-7: RI10 > B-G-Ab Eb-E-C- D-Db-F F#-Bb-A Measures 7-10: R6 > Eb-B-C G-G#-D C-C#-A G#-E-F Measures 10-12: I5 > E-C-Db Ab-A-F G-F#Bb B-Eb-D Measures 13-15: R7 > E-C-C# Ab-C-Bb F-F#-Bb A-B-D They also fit with a single twelve-note unit. For example, second trichord of the twelve-note row is a

transposed RI of the first trichord. These trichords assemble into a single melodic line over the piano’s accompaniment, with the component notes of the melody parceled out among different instruments. The four-pitch class sets in the second movement are all transpositionally equivalent as D#-E-G, D-D#-F#, B-C-Eb, and Ab-A-C. This is clear when they are written in normal form. For example, the D# in the first set has the same position with the D note in the second set and the B note in the third set has the same position with the Ab in the fourth. Then, these are the same for the other notes of the four trichords. The spaces between two pitches (unordered pitch class intervals) give the similar sounds. Each notes in the first twelve-tone fragment moves up eight semitones that we called T8 to the second row. G goes to Eb, D goes to B, and E goes to C. This makes


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all trichords derived from each other. The series that are closely related by transposition and inversion are the members of the same set class. The four trichords of the twelve-tone row are all 0 1 4 as prime form and they are overlapping as vertical, linear, and diagonal. The second vertical trichord (D, D#, F#) is RI6 of the first diagonal chord (G, B, B#). Third one is R1 (E, F, C#) vertically. The fourth vertical one (C, Ab, A) is I0. These derived series are in an extraordinary motivic unity.

Thus, in the first nine measures, all four-group trichords are in a three twelve-note row and they are members of the same set class. Every time the series comes, four statements of set classes are heard. The structure develops both note-to-note, trichord to trichord and also series to series. Series (see Figure 1) influence can also be seen in the instrumentation. For example, the two notes of viola in measure two, is in silent until measure 13 play two more notes. It creates 0 14 again with repeated E note. The registers are also influenced by the series. Another example, the highest notes of measures two, four and six are D# in viola part, B in violin and D in flute part which create another 0 14.

Figure 1. Second movement, measures 1-18.


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In the second page, bar 19 (see Figure 2), another twelve-tone row starts with R1 and then the next trichords goes on with P8 and R7. The linear ones that are overlapped are generally retrograde of them.

After bar 29, in the opening measures, horn, trumpet, and trombones are muting and then similar pitch equivalence starts between the remaining instruments. Webern uses the “morendo” direction, which means “dying”, rarely at the end of the second movement.

In the second movement, in general, the groups of three are formed by single tones in the melodic instruments complemented by two-note harmonic groupings in the piano. The solo line consists of the initial note of each three-note group of the row, which themselves form other transpositions of the identical three-note group. The interlocking of these groupings is carried out systematically. Transpositions of these materials are chosen which produce further relations and identities. Certain pitches and groups of two and three-notes reappear in different forms and transpositions of the row material, and these relationships are exploited in terms of register, tone color, position in the phrase and non-pitched aspects of the music are brought into close relationships with the twelve-tone pitch material (Salzman, 1988).

Figure 2. Measures 19-39.


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If considering three different parts of the second movement, it is possible to separate the first part until the end of measure 28, second part ends in 56 and the recapitulation lasts from the measure 57 to the end of the movement (see Figure 3). As it is already known, A part starts with P7, B with P4 and next A with P7 again. The second trichord of the B is RI3 and A’s is RI6.



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In the last five bars of the second movement P7 row in the beginning comes again but in different instrumentation (see Figure 4). The starter G note is heard by trumpet again but the next coming notes are heard as changed and all trichords come in diagonal way instead of vertical and linear as it is in the beginning.


Third Movement The third movement 6/8 (2x3/8), compresses the three note groups into impacted units, charged along with

impetuousness. It amounts to the most striking musical sound object than Webern had yet composed. This movement was formed from 0 1 4 trichords like both two movements before. It’s heard as more pointillist but at the same time more flowing than the other movements. Its central “still point” as a sonority of one of each ensemble with same structural function. There are lots of silent parts between the instrumentation again that separates the set classes from each other maybe. It seems more linear as a general movement than the second one. There are also some parts that change the instruments again but not lots of rhythmical variation. The end of the third movement evidenced a new fluency and facility. It is characterized by a new lyrical directness, rooted in a particularly simple use of serial technique.

In the last movement, the first four trichords are following the same row of the second movement as prime form, retrograde-inversion, retrograde and inversion but in different transpositions of course as P5, RI10, R11 and I4 linearly as they are shown below.


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Third movement, measures 1-4 (see Figure 5): (derived series of 0 14 trichord) __3-3__ __3-3__ __3-3__ __3-3__ F-F#-D C#-A-Bb Ab-C-B E-Eb-G P5 +1 -4 R10 -4 +1 R11 +4 -1 I4 -1 +4 Measures 4-8: I4: F#-Bb-A RI5: D-C#-F P3: Eb-E-C R8: B-G-Ab

Figure 5. Third movement, measures 1-6.

Measures 8-11: I9: A-G#-G RI8: F-E-G# P6: F#-G-Eb R11: D-Bb-B Measures 11-13: R9: C-G#-A P4: E-F-Db RI6: Eb-D-F# I10: G-B-Bb The next four of them appear in the same way but in different row as I4, RI5, P3, and R8. In bars 14-15

and 16-17, there are 0 12 and 0 15 chords only to be a mediator to create the main 0 14 trichords both linear and vertical way. Trichords can sometimes be followed just linear for every different instrument, sometimes both linear and vertical, also using diagonal and horizontal way rarely. It is mentioned more chordal through the finish.

It can be seen almost the transpositions of P, R, RI, or I’s of trichord in the analysis (see Figure 6).



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In bar 28 (see Figure 7), the first three trichords are the same as with the beginning P5, RI10, and R11. So it may be seen as an early recapitulation.


The vertical RI2 trichord in bar 43 (see Figure 8) is exactly the same as the one in measure 58. Actually after these measures, it is obvious that a general repetitive section starts on all of the trichords especially in the piano part obviously. Another example of this thesis is the starter trichord of the second movement G, B, and Bb is in bars 45 and 56 linearly and also in bar 48 vertically.



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In measure 58 (see Figure 9), it starts a new repetitive section that includes four different trichords equal to a twelve-tone row in the piano part vertically and also linearly in all the other instruments until the end of the movement as it is shown below.

RI2: B-Bb-D P6: F#-G-Eb RI8: F-E-G# I0: A-C#-C


At the end of the third movement (see Figure 10), last 0 1 4 trichord is R5. If it is considered the first 0 1 4 trichord of this movements was P5. Thus, the main common note F starts with prime form and ends of its retrograde.


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Conclusion Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instrument’s Op. 24 is analyzed as a total serial work of twelve-tone system.

It is seen that the minor and major intervals used as the main principle of its style. The special effects are the structural elements of the instruments. The concertos derived rows were completed as a matrix. The main achievement of this paper was analyzing the row’s three-note segments of the pitches and cross-checking measure by measure. In this way, the usage of the series can be seen both horizontally and vertically in the partition.

As a conclusion, Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instruments Op. 24’s all three movements are successfully derived from each other. How Weberns composes is a big factor for this kind of composition, which constitutes derived series in twelve-tone system.


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References Hayes, M. (1995). Anton von Webern. London: Phaidon Press. Johnson, J. (1999). Webern and the transformation of nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salzman, E. (1988). Twentieth-Century music—An introduction (3rd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Simms, B. R. (1999). Schoenberg, Berg and Webern—A companion to the second viennese school. Westport, Conn: Greenwood

Press. Straus, J. N. (2000). Introduction to post-tonal theory (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall.


Emotional Intelligence and Belief in Just World Among

Engineering Students∗

Alpana Ashutosh Vaidya

Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce, Pune, India

The present study is an attempt to find out relation between emotional intelligence and Belief in Just World (BJW)

among engineering students of Pune city. The sample consisted of 217 second year engineering students from

various engineering colleges of Pune city. Emotional intelligence was measured with the help of one of the popular

measures of emotional intelligence developed by Schutte et al. in 1998 (SEIS). BJW was measured with the help of

General Belief in a Just World scale by Dalbert et al. in 1987. Pearson’s Product moment correlation was used to

find out correlation between BJW and emotional intelligence and test was used to find out gender differences on the

variables of the study. Obtained results showed a significant positive correlation between BJW and emotional

intelligence. The results demonstrated sex differences in general belief in a just world and also on emotional

intelligence. Implications of the study in the light of engineering course have been discussed.

Keywords: BJW, emotional intelligence, General Belief in a Just World

Introduction Emotional intelligence has attracted a growing attention worldwide. This is due to the importance given to

relationships at work place and also today life, as a result of which several studies have been conducted in

educational, health, and occupational areas. Many scholars have realized that mere academic success is not

important, but social adaption in and out of the classroom is also important. In view of this, an attempt has

been made in the present study to take emotional intelligence as one of the important variables of the present

study.

Societies are full of inequalities and injustices. Disproportionate distribution of wealth and inequality of

access is seen in every field, for example, education, workplace, health care, etc.. Individuals react differently

to observed or experienced injustice. Some feel moral outrage and seek to restore justice (e.g., Montada,

Schmitt, & Dalbert, 1986). Several psychologists have put forth the explanation for justice-driven reaction. One

of the most influential is the just world hypothesis introduced by Lerner (1965, 1980). The just world

hypothesis states that people need to believe in a just world in which everyone gets what they deserve and

deserves what they get. This belief enables them to deal with their social environment as though it were stable

and orderly and thus serves important adaptive functions. As a result, people are motivated to defend their

belief in a just world when it is threatened by injustices, either experienced or observed.

∗ Special thanks to BCUD University of Pune, India for funding this project. Without their support this work would not have been possible.

Alpana Ashutosh Vaidya, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Psychology, Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce.

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Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Belief in Just World (BJW) Among Engineering Students Engineering combines the fields of science technology and mathematics to solve real world problems that

improve the world around us. What really distinguishes an engineer is his ability to implement ideas in a cost

effective and practical approach. Thus, an engineer has an ability to take on thoughts, abstract ideas and

translate them into a product. In doing so he uses his insight to conceive, model, and scale an appropriate

solution to a problem or objective. The discipline of engineering is extremely broad, and encompasses a range

of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of technology

and types of application. More than ever, engineers are now required to have knowledge of relevant sciences

form their design projects, and also the skills required to deal with individuals in the department. They have to

tackle problems arising out of interpersonal relations. All these things require not only knowledge and insight

into functioning of machine but also understanding of human behavior; in particular, human relations and

emotional intelligence. Therefore, emotional intelligence was taken as one of the variables of the study.

Considering the importance of emotional intelligence in today’s world this has been extensively studied by

different psychologists. For example, it has been studied in the domains of daily life such as physical and

mental health, academic and work place performance, and social functioning (Brackett, Rivers, & Salovey,

2011; Hervas, 2011; Mayer, Roberts, & Barsade, 2008; O’Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, & Story, 2010).

Studies have examined the mechanisms by which EI functions in individuals. Studies have also shown how

emotional abilities vary as a result of socio demographic variables like age, gender socioeconomic or

educational level, and so on (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999; Palmer, Gignac, Monocha, & Stough, 2005).

There are different models of emotional intelligence, for example, ability EI models by Salovey and Mayer,

Mixed models of EI—the Emotional Competencies model by Goleman, Trait EI model by Petrides and

colleagues. The present paper is based on self report model of emotional intelligence. Schutte Self-Report

Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT) is based on self report model of emotional intelligence.

The present study is an attempt to find out emotional intelligence among second year engineering students

of Pune city. It also finds out the gender differences in emotional intelligence using Schutte et al. (1998) Scale

of Emotional Intelligence.

Review of literature has shown that many empirical studies have reported significant gender differences on

EI and with respect to the aspects related to emotional world. For example, studies of Grossman and Wood

(1993) has shown emotionality dimension to be more in females than males. Similarly, Grewal and Salovey

(2005) have found that the female gender is more emotional than males. The biological explanation proposes

that women’s biochemistry is better prepared to consider one’s own emotions and those of others. For example,

studies by Baron-Cohen (2002, 2003), R. C. Gur, B. Gunning-Dixon, and R. E. Gur (2002), Craig et al. (2009),

N. Jausovec and K. Jausovec (2005) have shown that certain areas of brain dedicated to emotional processing

can be larger in women than in men and cerebral processing of emotions differes between men and women.

Regarding the social aspects, studies have shown that men are taught to minimize certain emotions related

to sadness, guilt, vulnerability, and fear (Brody & Hall, 1993; Sanchez Nunez, Fernandez-Berrocal, Montanes,

& Latorre, 2008). Extreme male brain theory of autism proposed by Baron-Cohen relies on biological and

social arguments. According to this theory, the brains of men and women are structured differently and

feminine brain is predominantly structured to feel empathy, while the masculine brain predominantly seeks to

understand and construct systems (Baron-Cohen, 2002).


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Both biological and social explanations have received support from various empirical studies. For example,

studies of Brody and Hall (2000), Ciarrochi, Hynes, and Crittenden (2005), Hall (1978), Hall and Mast (2008),

Hargie, Saunders, and Dickson (1995) have shown that emotional abilities are greater in women than in men

and that women have greater emotional knowledge, and they express positive and negative emotions more

fluently and more frequently, they have more interpersonal competencies and are more socially adept. Indeed,

most studies of EI that are based on ability tests such as the MSCEIT (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002) and

that include gender in their analysis have assumed women to be superior in emotional abilities (Brackett &

Mayer, 2003; Ciarrochi, Chan, & Caputi, 2000; Extremera, Fernandez-Berrocal, & Salovey, 2006; Kafetsios,

2004; Mayer et al., 1999; Palmer et al., 2005). Although studies have shown that women are superior in EI,

they have produced inconsistent results about the specific EI dimensions on which women perform better. For

example, some of the studies have reported gender differences fundamentally in experimental aspects of EI

such as perception and emotional facilitation (Castri-Schilo & Kee, 2010; Farrelly & Austin, 2007, Livingstone

& Day, 2005), others have found gender differences in strategic aspects of EI such as understanding and

emotional managing (Farrelly & Austin, 2007; Goldenberg, Matheson, & Mantler, 2006). Other studies have

found mixed results in which women were found to be superior in diverse aspects of EI, namely, perception,

facilitation, understanding, and total score (Mclntyre, 2010). Another group of studies have found women to be

superior on all dimensions of the MSCEIT (Day & Carroll, 2004; Extremera & Fernandez-Berrocal, 2009;

Extremera, et al., 2006; Lumley, Gustavson, Partridge, & Labouvie-Vief, 2005; Palmer et al., 2005).

Gender differences in EI were considered in the present study because the review of literature has shown

disagreement about the dimensions of EI on which women perform better and the magnitude of women’s

superiority on those dimensions. For example, in one study gender differences on EI has been reported to be

small (Day & Carroll, 2004; Livingstone & Day, 2005; Lumley et al., 2005). In addition, studies have

suggested that the relation between gender and EI deserves analyses in its own right. Gender as an explanatory

factor of behavior, always operates in a complex interactions with other factors, demographic as well as

socio-cultural (Mclntyre & Edwards, 2009). Although several studies have shown that women are more

emotionally intelligent than men, most of them have analyzed the relation between the two only tangentially.

Other studies have made explicit hypotheses about this relation (Ciarrochi et al., 2000; Joseph & Newman,

2010; Kafetsios, 2004).

According to the just world hypothesis, “people want to and have to believe they live in a just world so

that they can go about their daily lives with a sense of trust, hope, and confidence in their future” (Lerner, 1980,

p. 14). Three different functions of the belief in a just world can be identified (Dalbert, 2001). First is trust

function, second is the assimilation function and the third one is the motive function. The trust has adaptive

consequences; it gives individuals the confidence to invest in long-term goals, to trust others and to treat them

justly, and to be rewarded justly. Dette, Stöber, and Dalbert (2004), Otto and Dalbert (2005), Tomka and

Blascovich (1994) showed that strong compared weak just world believers felt less threatened and less

distressed when confronted with achievement tasks in the laboratory and that they showed higher performance.

The assimilation function helps individuals confronted with injustice to preserve the BJW by restoring justice

either psychologically (e.g., minimizing the injustice) or behaviorally (e.g., compensating the injustice). As a

result, school students with a strong BJW have been found to evaluate their teacher’s behavior as more just than

students with a weak BJW (e.g., Correia & Dalbert, 2007; Dalbert & Stoeber, 2005). After more than 40 years

of just world research three functions of the belief in a just world can be identified (Dalbert, 2001). They are


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trust function, assimilation function, and motive function. Regarding motive function it can be said that BJW is

indicative of a personal contract (Lerner, 1980). Strong just world believers strive for justice themselves and are

motivated to achieve personal goals by just means (Hafer, 2000; Hafer & Begue, 2005). By acting justly, they

respect the terms of their personal contract (Lerner, 1977) which gives them the prospect of being justly

rewarded. Studies have shown that BJW is an important correlate of social responsibility as a trait (Bierhoff,

1994). Study by Dalbert and Umlauft (2009) showed that the BJW intuitively motivated players to choose

equal allocations in an experimental dictator game. BJW has been found to be associated with less

rule-breaking behavior (Otto & Dalbert, 2005) and fewer delinquent intentions (Sutton & Winnard, 2007).

Justice can be seen as a key issue in college life. Students want to be treat justly by their faculty and consider

justice to be one of the most important attributes of a good teacher (Hofer, Pekrun, & Zielinski, 1986). Studies

on school teachers have shown that teachers describing themselves as justice-oriented persons who care about

the justice of important decisions, such as grades awarded (Kanders, 2000). Yet the students across cultural

contexts frequently report unjust event at school (Fan & Chan, 1999; Israelashvill, 1997).

The assimilation function of the BJW allows strong just world believers to assimilate experiences of

injustice, and therefore to feel more justly treated by others. Studies have shown that in the school context,

students with a stronger BJW can be expected to feel more justly Just-world beliefs (Lerner & Miller, 1978).

By and large, “people deserve what they get in life”. “Basically, the world is a just place”. “People who do

their job will rise to the top”. “People who meet with misfortune have often brought it on themselves” (Learner

& Miller, 1978).

Method Participants

Participants consisted of students from various engineering colleges of Pune city. They were from ENTC,

Mechanical engineering, and Computer engineering. Pune city was chosen because Pune is an educational hub.

It is considered as education and cultural capital of India. It has also acquired a reputation for educational and

research facilities available all over. With the establishment of University of Pune, National Defence Academy

(NDA) and many more other institutes introduced new vistas to the scene. Institutes like MIT, Sihnagad

College of Engineering, COEP and many more institutions have brought in a different grace to the studies of

engineering in Pune city. In addition, courses offered by these institutes for engineering students coupled with

Pune culture have enabled them to attract a large number of students. The sample consisted of 211 students

from various engineering colleges of Pune city. Out of which 45 were boys and 166 were girls. Data were

collected from second year engineering students because during the first year of engineering the students take

time to settle with the college and course. By the time they enter third and fourth year they are busy with

project and placements. So it was more convenient for the researcher to get the permission for data collection

from second year engineering students.

Statement of the Problem To find out the relationship between emotional intelligence and belief in a just world among second year

engineering students of Pune city.

Significance of the Study The present study is important as no studies have been conducted on Indian students particularly,

engineering students on relation between BJW and EQ.


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BJW and happiness index contributes to mental health. Help the students to become aware of one’s own

tendencies and realities of life.

Aims and Objectives of the Research

To find out relation between BJW and emotional intelligence; To find out sex differences in emotional

intelligence among engineering students; To find out sex differences in BJW among engineering students.

Hypotheses

General belief in Just World will be positively correlated with EI; Boys and girls will differ on BJW; Boys

and girls will differ on EI.

Measures The data were collected using the following scales.

Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS). Emotional intelligence was measured by using Schutte et al. (1998)

scale of emotional intelligence. EIS is a 5-point Likert scale; consisting of 33 items. The reliability and validity

of the scale is sound. For example, reliability of the scale was found to be 0.90. The scale has also been used in

the earlier studies on university students in India and proved to be useful General belief in a just world. Belief in a just world was measured by using General Belief in a Just

World (BJW) by Claudia Dalbert (1987). It is a 6-point Likert scale with end points “totally disagree” to

“totally agree”. The reliability of the scale is (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.71). In the present study only General

Belief in a Just World was taken into consideration.

Procedure for data collection: Group testing sessions were used for data collection. Data were collected

from 10 different engineering colleges of Pune city. First head of the departments from respective colleges

were contacted after getting the permission from the principal’s data was collected. Purposive sampling

technique was used for data collection.

Data analysis. Data were analyzed using SPSS 19 for windows. After checking for the normality data

were analyzed using parametric statistics. Descriptive statistics was used to calculate mean and SD. Pearson’s

product moment correlation was used to test the correlational hypotheses. The t-test was used to find out gender

differences in emotional intelligence and belief in a just world.

Results Obtained results showed that there was not a significant positive correlation relation between EI and BJW

(refer to Table 1). Justice and emotional intelligence was negatively correlated (p > 0.05). Thereby, suggesting

that higher the score on justice lesser is the score on emotional intelligence. Those who score high on justice are

likely to consider world to be just and a happy place to live in.

Significant positive correlation was obtained between justice and general condition of BJW (see Table 1).

Table 1

Product Moment Correlation Between EI and BJW (N = 211) Justice 1 Justice 2 General condition Emotional intelligence

Justice 1 1

Justice 2 -0.02 1

General condition 0.27** -0.08 1

Emotional intelligence -0.15* 0.007 -0.18 1

Notes. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.


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Regarding gender differences on EI obtained results showed that boys and girls did not differ on EI. The

obtained results go along with previous studies conducted using the same scale on university students. The

results may be due to the scale that was used to measure emotional intelligence. The scale is based on trait

model of emotional intelligence.

Regarding BJW obtained results showed that on Justice 1 and Justice 2 gender differences were noticed.

But on general condition of BJW not gender differences were noticed (see Table 2). Thereby, suggesting that in

general girls perceive the world to be happy and just place to live in.

Table 2

Means, SD, and t for EI and BJW (N = 211) Sex N Mean SD t

Justice 1 Female 45 25.89 4.99

2.54** Male 116 24.14 3.82

Justice 2 Female 45 15.69 3.15

1.93* Male 116 14.59 3.40

General condition Female 45 56.49 5.94

1.10NS Male 116 55.20 7.15

Emotional intelligence Female 45 123.29 18.63 1.68NS

Male 116 118.17 17.96

Notes. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.

Conclusion Obtained results showed that there was not a significant positive correlation relation between EI and BJW.

Significant positive correlation was obtained between Justice and general condition. Boys and girls did not

differ on EI. Female scored higher than male on BJW.

Implications of the Study The present study will help one to understand the emotional intelligence among engineering and to

understand the psychological dimensions of engineering students and will also enable the industrialists to select

the candidates scoring high on EI.

BJW will help them to believe that they live in a just world so that they can go about their daily lives with

a sense of trust, hope, and confidence in future.

Limitations of the Study Firstly, the number of boys and girls in the sample could not be kept equal. The boys were more

represented than the girls did. Secondly, correlational nature of study did not allow to form cause and effect

relation directly. Thirdly, self-report measures were used for data collection. The self-report measures have

certain limitations such as, social desirability effect, etc.

In spite of these limitations, this is one of the few studies conducted in India on the psychosocial impact of

Information Technology on the college-going youth and in that sense the study assumes importance.

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Original or Western Imitation: The Case of Arab Theatre

Abdulaziz H. Alabdullah Kuwait University, Keifan, Kuwait

When discussing the roots of Arab theatre, we find ourselves confronting two main streams of thought. The first

one, represented by prominent Arab writers like Najib Mahfuz, Abbas Al-Aqqad, M. Badawi, and other critics,

rejects the theory that an Arab theatre existed before the mid-19th century. The second stream, represented by

prominent scholars like Ali Al-Rai, Ibrahim Hamada and S. Moreh, see modern Arab theatre as part of a continuum,

emphasizing of some elements of dramatic manifestations in Arab literary heritage. This paper intends to examine

these two streams, their evidences and arguments. Such examination will shed some light on the origin of Arab

theatre as a literary genre, and how it was influenced, if any, by Western theatrical heritage. Thus, answering the

main question of this paper, whether Arab theatre is original or simply a Western imitation.

Keywords: originality, Modernism, imitation, heritage

Introduction The 19th century marked the birth of modern Arab theatre and the beginning of a period of interplay

between Arab drama and Western drama. Many studies recognize the Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) as where the modern Arab theatre began its life in the mid-19th century. Many great writers in all the major genres of Arabic literature have emerged from that part of the Arab world, including such figures as Marun al-Naqqash, Ahmed Aby Khalil al-Qabbani, Mikhail Nuayma, Khalil Mutran, Jibran Khalil Jibran, and many others. Each one of these has left his own distinctive mark on his field of literature.

When discussing, as these writers have done, the roots of Arab theatre, we find ourselves confronting two main streams of thought. The first one, represented by Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Najib Mahfuz, Mustdafa Badawi and some critics, rejects the theory that an Arab theatre existed before the mid-19th century. They consider that it was Europe that provided the impetus for the creation of modern Arab theatre. They argue that the Arabs were first exposed to the theatre as a modern literary genre during the military expedition led by Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt from 1798 to 1801, when some French amateurs entertained the French troops in Cairo by performing some plays. The Egyptian playwright and academic, Rashad Rushdi, considers any argument, regarding the roots and origins of Arab theatre, as futile. He argued that there is no doubt that we have borrowed the theatre, an artistic form, from Western civilization, as we have borrowed the novel and modern poetry.

The second stream, represented by Ali al-Rai, Ibrahim Hamada, Shmuel Moreh, and others see modern Arab theatre as part of a continuum, emphasizing the existence of some elements of dramatic manifestations in Arab literary heritage. Amongst such manifestations or pre-theatre forms, where those performers who recited popular story-tales, or presented The Shadow Plays (khayal al-zill) and The Carpet Theatre in North Africa

Abdulaziz H. Alabdullah, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of English Literature and Arts, Kuwait University.

DAVID PUBLISHING

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ORIGINAL OR WESTERN IMITATION: THE CASE OF ARAB THEATRE

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during religious festivals. Some scholars consider the art of Maqama as an early manifestation of semi-dramatic form. Some critics and scholars of this second group go even further by claiming that such pre-theatre forms can be traced back to pre-Islamic times, and were to be witnessed at the famous poetic festivals held in souks Ukaz and Adhruat, as well as being seen through the ages at marriage and religious ceremonies and other social celebrations such as the Samir.

In his valuable study, “The Background of Medieval Arabic Theatre” (1992), S. Moreh has produced evidence that the Arabs did know the theatre in the early years of Islam, but has suggested that their attitude towards such as art as live theatre might have been influenced profoundly by the negative approach of Christian and Jewish religious authorities before Islam, who had rejected drama and considered it a vulgar and anti-religious genre.

There are also numerous historical references to acting or theatrical experiments in certain parts of the Islamic World. From which, during the Abbasside era, the plays of Ibn Danial (1248-1311), who produced the genre of shadow play (khayal al-zill), the most well-known traditional literary genre that could rightly be considered a precursor of the modern theatre. This kind of traditional popular theatre, often known as Qarakuz, also survived in Syria, as well as in many Arab countries, alongside the modern Europeanized Arab theatre, to the late 19th century and in some places later, performed in the streets, private homes and cafes.

Manifestations of Early Arab Pre-theatrical Forms

Popular entertainment in the Arab world was scant and very modest compared to the Far East, Persia, or Hellenistic experience. There is only scant evidence for Arab awareness of theatrical performances in the Byzantine Empire on the eve of Islam. Mainly poets and poetry supply such evidence. In one of these poems, Hassan Bin Thabit—the Prophet’s Poet mentions the term “Mayamis”, which means literally the person who is ridiculed. The word “yal`ab” (play) appears also in other poems to refer to some form of acting.

The main form of popular entertainment therefore, was the reciting of poetry, as it was accepted and seen as the highest level of the literary canon. Poets compete with each other during the festivals and feasts, especially at certain days in Souk Ukaz (Ukaz Market). Poetry was the early and probably the only form of recording historical and political events of the time and passing it to the coming generations.

Players of Kurraj The word Kurraj is of Persian origin meaning colt, donkey or mule, which suggests that the acting was of

Persian origin too. At all events, the definition of the Kurraj given by Arab lexicographers is a wooden hoppy-horse. This foreign popular game is associated with Shamanic and seasonal fertility rituals. An Arab story speaks of the use of Qasaba (a horse-headed reed, or simply a stick horse) telling of the besieged Persian king Bahram Gour who put a reed between his legs and galloped about with a crown of sweet basil on his head, together with his 200 maids, singing, shouting, and dancing. This seems to have been a mock-play imitating a Shaman rite to defeat the besieging enemies. This form of popular entertainment was not widely performed; nevertheless, it was mentioned several times by prominent Islamic figures.

The description of Kurraj given by al-Isfahani and Ibn Khaldun shows clearly that the player was hidden behind the drapery of the kurraj, which had no wheels or legs to support players.

Muharrijun (Jesters) This term is one of few Arabic theatrical terms which passed to some European languages. According to

Wetzstein, the term muharrij was brought by the Umayyads to Spain. On the other hand, Dozy and Engelmann


751

think that the Spanish term muharrache or homarrache are from the Arabic muharrij, and are synonyms to mascara, and that both of the terms mascara and moharrache have meaning of buffoon and masquerade (false face = mask).

A figure wearing a conical cap with bells and the tail of an animal describes the muharrij. Many performances involving players (actors) dressed as bears, monkeys and other animals were played in Damascus and Egypt:

There is in Damascus a class of people representing various crafts who perform at night at large assemblies. At these parties they have music at first; then the “hakawati” (story-teller) presents short witty declamations “shir mudhik” (funny poetry); then come the muharrij, always in group of three or four; if there are only two of them they choose one from the assembly to perform “fasl al-naqa” ( the play of the she-camel), where a Bedouin hires the naqa; then “fasl al-fadis” (the play of the carcass)—one is enveloped in a cloth and sold to the gypsies as a carcass. (Wetzstein, 1868, p. 132)

In Egypt, a similar act is mentioned in Said Al-Bustani’s novel Riwayat Dhat al-Khidr (1904). He mentions an actor called Ali Kaka who used to appear in the shape of various animals on the Prophet’s birthday (Mawlid al-Nabawi). Such performance is described by the author of Tamthil and Hazl (acting and jest):

Dhat al-Khidr saw a large crowd of people behind the circle of tents (in the Mawlid’s square, where the prophet’s Birthday was celebrated). They were staring at a man, stretching their necks in order to see him. He was playing in their midst, in such a way that good taste would reject it and a chaste soul would shun it. The man is called Ali Kaka. He acts in his play with different forms and shapes. Once in the form of bear and once in the form of monkey. (Al-Bustani, 1904, p. 34)

Many described the performance of muharrijun as “ape-like, obscene dances and absurd jokes”. Such performances are accompanied by music. No dialogue is attested to it in the beginning, but later it developed differently. It is a type of buffoonery, whereby actors wear masks and draw laughter from the audience by dance and funny acts.

Hikaya (Story) Impersonation and plays: Arab lexicographers define Hikaya as meaning imitation, impersonation, and

aping, as well as a story or tale. The original meaning of the word is imitation, and in early Arabic literature it is sometimes used in the sense of performing an actual play. This term haki (imitator) was well known in early Islam times.

Al-Jahiz, who also remarks on the ability of such persons to mimic animal cries, was clearly talking about professional performers, probably the type who performed in market places. Other accounts, however, refer to ordinary peole mimicking each other, and here the mimicry is invariably parody, the intention being to tease or humiliate the person mimicked.

The meaning of hikaya, shifted by the 14th century to mean a tale, story or sketch. The early examples of hikaya do not indicate that impersonation could be combined with any kind of plot, but rather attestations make it clear that hikayat sometimes amounted to actual plays, or more precisely scenes or sketches, which might be based on written texts.

The hakawati (story-teller) recites and enacts stories and tales of heroism such as the story of Antarah, Abu Zayd al-Hilali, and Shehraza in café’s and public places, describing their bravery and heroism and reciting poetry in that regard. Such public entertainers attracted large audiences who listened and commented on what they heard. Hikaya served as a model for the narrative of the Maqama and Khayal-alZill later on.


752

The Maqama The Maqama elaborated by Badi` al-Zaman al-Hamadani (969-1007) is a short and ornate picaresque

work in a rhymed prose, couched in the first person singular. It usually contains a marrative element consisting of an amusing or surprising, real or true to life scene, and it is formulated in the present tense. In every Maqama there is a narrator (rawi) called Isa ibn Hisham, and a hero, Abulfath al-Iskandari, who generally appears as a disguised beggar (mukaddi) trying to earn his livingby his wits, his linguistic virtuosity and rhetoric talent. Each Maqama contains a separate episode in which the narrator meets the disguised hero, there being no connection between them except for the haphazard wanderings of narrator and hero. There is no serious developing plot, narrative thread or full characterization. However, the purpose of the Maqama would appear to have been not just exhibition of rhetoric skills, and admonition, but also imitation of the dialogue of the hikaya (story) in the sense of play.

Some Egyptian scholars as Abd al-Hamid Yunis says that the Maqama has its origins in dramatic literature composed as early as the pre-Islamic period. The form was derived from standing (qiyam) in an assembly place (Dar al-Nadwa)… and, in fact, it consisted of one direct and continuous acting performance by single actor. The dramatic dialogue and structure of the maqama is an imitation of the Hikaya or Khayal. These were a useful composition of the category of fables (hikayat put in the mouth of animals and objects ), known in Arabic literature as the stories of Kalila wa-Dimna. Such hikayat (stories), according to al-Hariri, were recited or performed by ruwat (story-tellers).

Khayal and Khayal al-Zill The term khayal means figure or phantom. In its most prosaic sense it is a stick dressed in cloth so as to

look like a man. It also means statue, shadow, reflection, and fantasy. Khayal was used in the sense of play or live performance, not just the implements associated therewith, before it came to be appropriated by the shadow play. Such khayal performers used to perform their acts or anecdotes during the day. Those live players used to be accompanied by music and used to tour many places to present their live entertainment.

Khayal al-Zill (Shadow play): The combination of the terms khayal and al-Zill (shadow) was adopted to describe a new type of entertainment originating in the Far East. Thus the word khayal acquired the meaning of play as part of this expression. One of the most prominent figures of this type of entertainment was Ibn Daniyal (1248-1311), who wrote several shadow plays, one of which is Babat Tayf al-Khayal (the doors of the phantom of shadow). Ibn al-Haytham describes this type of entertainment saying: “Moreover, when the sight percieves the figures behind the screen, these figures being images which the presenter moves so that their shadows appear upon the wall behind the screen and upon the screen itself” (Sabra, 1983, p. 67).

Conclusion In conclusion, many cultures such as the Hellenistic, Byzantine, Persian, Turkish and Far East influenced

early Arab popular entertainment. By the eve of Islam these dramatic ceremonies came to be understood as commemorating some legendary or historical event and became seasonal folk tales. They tended towards parody and mockery of the former customs and rituals.

A reference to pre-modern popular drama in Egypt was made by the well-known Danish explorer, Carsten Niebuhr and the Italian archaeologist, Belzoni, who visited Egypt and saw in 1815 two such crude burlesques performed by a group of traveling players (Awlad Rabiya) in the outskirts of Cairo. Such itinerant players may well have been providing popular entertainment of this sort for centuries in different parts of the Arab world.


753

However, the real inauguration of Arabic theatre in its modern sense was in 1847 when the merchant Marun-al-Naqqash directed—in Beirut—what was probably the first performance of his Arabic play al-Bakhil (the Miser) (1847), which was heavily indebted to Moliere’s L’Avare (1668).

Al-Naqqash imported, on returning from his travels in Italy, the Western model of theatre believing that it was the only suitable and elevated form of literature in the world. In his Arabic theatre, he tried at a later stage to develop this imported art whilst maintaining its original western structure, but he soon realized that the Arab audience wanted something closer to their own culture stemming from their own history. This led him to seek his subjects from the traditional Arab literary heritage The Arabian Nights (1704).

The importation of the concepts of modern European theatre to the Arab world was not such a unique occurrence. The 19th century was an era of change in the Middle East that was to see a resurgence of Arab culture and identity under Ottoman rule. New, sometimes disturbing idea began to circulate and threatened to disrupt traditional patterns of life: Ideas of equality between Muslims and Christians, modernization, reform and nationalism. Most of these ideas came from Europe and were gradually absorbed into local society. The intellectual instability of this period, which accompanied these new ideas, persisted into modern times.

From the very beginning, Arab playwrights have problems in establishing a rapport between the stage and the audience from this alien proscenium arch stage of European theatre. In general, one may say that this new literary genre, drama, has been alien to the Arab audience, unlike poetry and other popular arts, it failed initially to elicit a response from the audience. This indifference was first noticed by Marun al-Naqqash; he was to say that despite his efforts the theatre was still alien in the Arab world. Al-Qabbani too had problems establishing the theatre in Damascus; he was forced to quit and flee Syria for Egypt. Similarly, the closure of the theatre of the Egyptian pioneer Ya’qub Sanu by the Egyptian ruler Khedive Isma’il, took place and succeeded, although Sanu claims otherwise, probably because this new art meant very little to the people of Egypt at the time.

Twentieth century Arab playwrights were to have similar problems; the Egyptian playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim has expressed the same notion regarding his own theatre. He has described his theatrical journey as a “mission impossible”, and has said that his theatrical art did not each wide numbers of theatergoers, because the theatre is still remote from the people’s hearts. This common feeling, shared by various playwrights throughout the history of the theatre in the Arab world, explains the difficult task faces any playwright in this part of the world. Despite the conflicting arguments which surround the origins of this literary genre in Arab literary history, it can clearly be seen that the modern Arab theatre laid its foundations by borrowing the forms and techniques of Western theatre, at first with little sense of the value of what it was borrowing. The English traveller David Urquhar (1805-1877) remarked upon the enthusiastic manner by which Marun al-Naqqash copied the art of Western theatre when he saw a performance of al-Naqqash’s company, saying that “they had seen in Europe footlights and the prompter’s box, and fancied it an essential point to stick them on where they were not required” (as cited in Najim, 1956, p. 36).

Arab playwrights have been trying since the modern theatre began to change the public’s attitude to the theatre producing something closer to the hearts of the people, something arising from their own culture and history. However no one can deny that modern Arab theatre is an imitation of Western theatre.

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2014.9 journal of literature and art studies